How to grow vegetables at home (and why everybody should)

No matter how much or how little space you have, you can enjoy the satisfaction of eating something you have grown organically. Even if you are limited to a small balcony and therefore a container garden, it is still possible to get a good little crop going as long as your space has at least 5 hours sunlight daily. If you are on my site reading these posts, I’m certain you are the type of person who is already aware of the chemicals sprayed on commercially grown crops, and the possible side effects. Washing your fruit and vegies will not completely rid them of the chemicals. If you are serious about your health, maintaining a chemical free home should be of upmost priority. In future posts I will go into reducing other chemicals in your home, which is so easy, I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing it! Growing your own is easy, cheap, and honestly quite exciting, the novelty never seems to wear off.

If you are not the type who is big on vegies, it is about time you got over it and changed to a more natural diet. There are amazing colours, flavours, textures and high levels of nutritents that you are missing out on, and don’t even get me started on how much better it makes you feel and look. Integrating fresh vegies into your meals is easy, even if you start off with basic salad greens that can be just picked and popped straight onto the plate with no preparation. If you have pondered it for a while, today is the day. Do something as a first step to starting your own vegie patch, whether it is purchasing some seeds online, getting outside and looking at what space you can utilise and preparing some edging. Anyone can honestly do this, it is much easier than you think!

Apart from the wholesome feeling it gives you to know you grew the plants yourself, the health benefits are substantial. Food you buy in a supermarket often has been picked some time ago, transported to a distribution centre, re-packed, then re-distributed to your local supermarket. I heard a truck driver here in NSW, Australia say that he often picked up tomatoes from Queensland, drove them to Victoria (thousands of kilometres away!) to a large distribution centre, only to pick the same load up again in the morning and return them to a supermarket distribution centre back in Queensland so they could be then sent on to all the stores. Not only do you end up with far from fresh food, that has been sprayed with chemicals, you are eating food that cost a lot in energy to get to it’s destination.

When getting started out, I strongly recommend you take a look at the main vegetables you eat regularly, or would like to eat regularly and start with those. There is no point growing rhubarb or chives if you don’t eat them often! You will want to experiment as time goes on, but start with a basic collection first.

If you are going to grow in the ground rather than containers, 2 squares of about 1.5 x 1.5 metres will be sufficient to give you a good crop for daily use, you can always add more later if it is working out and you want to grow everything you eat. If you can only use a small rectangle of 1m x 50cm use that, you can still grow a heap of lettuce and herbs there! I’d suggest raised garden beds because they are much easier to work with and can be set up ANYWHERE – on concrete, grass, pavers, clay, rock etc. You can use bricks, UNTREATED hardwood (ie fence palings built into a box), rocks, bales of straw or hay. Be creative, the only things you should avoid are tyres and treated wood because they leach chemicals into the soil and ultimately into your food. A quick google search will bring plenty of suggestions for "No Dig" vegetable gardens. I personally filled my last one with layers of wet newspaper, horse manure, lucerne hay and compost (I bought bags as I hadn’t got my compost bin going at that stage). I only had mine set up about 20cm high off the ground as I was over existing grass.

If you need to go with containers due to lack of space, the bigger the better as they dry out slower. Use anything you can find around, and make sure you drill drainage holes in the bottom if there are none.

There are many seed suppliers online, or you can cheat and buy seedlings to get things started and start your next planting with seeds so they are ready to plant out by the time you have harvested your first round of planting. I start all my seeds inside in little trays so I can just spray with a water bottle when walking past the windowsill. As soon as they are big enough to plant out, I go find some space and pop them in the ground. A packet of seeds will only cost around $2 and that gets you a thousand or two seeds. Once your crop is going, you can also allow some plants to go to seed, then collect and store the seeds, thus creading a free seed store for yourself.

The main vegetables I grow, that I know I will use are:

• Lettuce/Rocket
• Basil
• Oregano
• Tomatoes
• Snow Peas
• Beans
• Broccoli
• Zucchini
• Cucumber
• Asian green vegies (bok choy etc)
• Silverbeet
• Spinach

These are all fast growing, easy ones to start with. The seed packets will give you the planting information on spacing, depth and so on, just follow those, experiment and little and enjoy your fresh food! There is nothing better than getting to lunch or dinner time and having a quick wander around the garden and deciding what to eat depending on what is ready to pick. If you keep planting new seedlings out or seeds out directly as you harvest, you will have a constant, varied supply of food available. If you can only plant in some containers on a balcony, it is still a fantastic way to have truly fresh greens for your salads and perhaps a couple of dwarf fruit trees going too. Container planting is also great for your herbs. If you can only get set up to have a few pots of herbs going, that alone will add some nutrition to your meals rather than using dried herbs. The flavours will keep you motivated to remember to water your plants.

It really is that simple. Go stick your head outside when the sun is out next and have a look where you could start a little garden. Take that first step now and you won’t regret it! The time involved really only hinges on getting the planting space set up, you will spend only a small amount of time per week watering, planting or harvesting once it is set up. It is worth it and so much cheaper than rushing out to the shop for a load of vegies all the time.

If this post has motivated you to give it a go, I’d love to hear from you, so get in touch and send me some photos and a quick story about your little garden.