**This is a collaborative post
Growing your own veggies is a great way to cut down your weekly shopping bill. Not only that but it can also help you get regular organic food into your family’s diet! There’s just one problem, though – growing your own can often be a lot easier said than done!
We haven’t managed to grow any vegetables in the garden this year, but we did grow some tomatoes on the balcony – I ate the first ones the other week and they were yummy!
Even if you do manage to grow your own vegetables, you might not get all that many at first. But don’t worry; it’s easy increasing your yield from your garden. The following tips should help you get a lot more growth from your garden when you are growing your own!
Change Your Crops
There are some crops that are easier to grow than others. Ideally, when you are just starting out with your veg patch, you should stick to the plants that are easier to grow. You will have fewer problems and will end up with much more produce! The highest-yield veggies include tomatoes, peas and beans. Spinach, lettuce, and other leafy green vegetables are also relatively easy to grow as well.
Plant Them In Their Preferred Environment
Each plant will have its different preferred environment. Some will need very moist soil to grow in while others will prefer to be in bright sunlight away from too much water. So, before you do plant your seeds or cuttings, make sure you know in which conditions the plant will thrive in. Some will grow better in greenhouses or in a small window box on your kitchen window sill. When you buy your seeds or bulbs, make sure you read all the information on the packet as it will tell you the type of conditions the plant will thrive in.
Make Your Own Compost
If there is one thing that all plants love, it’s compost! You should be spreading this on your vegetable patch so that all of your vegetables get all of the nutrients they need to grow big and strong. It is incredibly easy to make your own compost at home, and this is something you should think of doing so that you don’t have to constantly buy some. All you need is an old dustbin that you can store all of your food and garden waste in. Eventually, this will decompose and start to become compost. Once it has been composted – this could take a few months – you can spread it on your garden.
Take Cuttings
Gardening can become very expensive if your plants keep on dying. You will have to pay to replace all the vegetables that you lose. One way around this is to take cuttings from your healthy plants and plant them in your garden instead. As these will have come off healthy plants, they are much more likely to survive than growing from seeds. They’ll already have many important nutrients in them, you just need to make sure that their roots take in the soil where you plant them. You can do this by watering with root food.
Now you can sit back and watch your veg garden grow!