Growing Vegetables in Your Garden Tips for Planting Vegetable Crops Outside

It does not matter whether you are an experienced gardener or are just a newbie, beginning to learn a brand-new field of growing your own fruit and vegetables – growing vegetables in your own garden, especially in the open depends on a number of factors.

This book is going to tell you all about how you can plant vegetable crops, in the open, and especially give you a number of tips about the other necessary factors which are going to help you get a plentiful harvest at the end of the growing season.
The time and the method of planting seeds and plants of a particular species, especially in the open, is going to determine – up to a certain extent – of the success or the failure of your particular crop. This is also going to rest on a number of factors, which may be influencing the rate of growth, and other factors which monitor your plant growth from germination to harvest.
Even with a good seed or a good plant, satisfactory and prolific crops are not going to be produced unless the planting is done at the right time and in a proper manner.
If we were living millenniums ago, we would go to our local priest, who incidentally happened to be a well experienced farmer himself, who would tell us about the best day, when we would be planting our crops. According to him, he looked at the stars and consulted them. He also called upon the good spirits, and the Gods, to aid in a bountiful harvest.
Naturally, we very well impressed would consider them really wise men, not knowing that they used the experiences of their own predecessors in order to transfer that knowledge to you, amidst lots of showmanship like calling up on the Gods and the spirits and talking to them!

Time of Planting

There is absolutely no way in which any person looking into his crystal ball can predict a definite date for the planting of vegetable seeds and plants because the climatic conditions are going to vary widely within even relatively small areas, owing to the differences in the elevation, proximity to water, high-altitude, and other environmental factors.
In fact, the sensible gardener is going to look at the time of planting, after referring to the soil and weather conditions and relating it with the kind of crop which is going to be grown as well as the time when the produce is desired.
In regions where the climatic conditions are favorable throughout the year, there is absolutely no definite time for planting. Surprisingly enough, I was looking at an almanac, published more than four centuries ago, and was astonished to see the change in the dates of planting. Within four centuries, the state of the atmosphere globally has changed so drastically, that if I went by the 16th-century planting seasons, my garden would be a wilderness by now, with nothing growing there.
When you are looking at earliness as an important factor as in regions of short growing seasons, the first planting is made as early as possible as your soil and the weather conditions permit. They should be satisfactory for the crop or the crops which have been growing there, and will be growing there in the future.
For example, if you are living in parts of California, or in Arizona or even the southern part of the United States, where the crops are grown for market during the fall and early winter, the planting is going to be done in late summer or in the early fall.
In areas where you are going to get plenty of freezing weather, especially Montana weather, crops for early summer market are planted as soon as the danger of frost is past.

Vegetable Crops and Cold Resistance
Vegetable crops may be grouped into three classes with respect to their resistance to cold climate – hardy vegetables which are going to withstand hard frost – The hardy group include spinach, kale, mustard, turnips, onions, and peas. The seeds can be planted as soon as the soil can be prepared in the spring
Then come the half hardy or those that will withstand like frosts and the seeds of which will germinate at relatively low temperatures and last of all the tender or those that are incapable of standing any sort of know temperature and are not going to germinate in cold soils. Seeds of the half hardy group may be planted two – weeks before the danger of a killing frost is over. Carrots, beets, parsnips, celery, which include celery grown from seeds and celery seedlings which have been hardening, chard, and lettuce belong to this particular group.
Tender plants include cucumbers, Lima beans, all sort of beans, sweetcorn, melons, pumpkins, okra, squashes, eggplants, tomatoes, and even pepper plants.

Planting Seeds Depth

Is this deep enough? Yes, if you are doing trench planting. Otherwise, the seeds need to be sown no deeper than 2 inches from the surface.
There are no hard and fast definite rules, which can be given regarding the depth to which you can plant seeds of various kinds. However, there are some rules found from experience, and the size of the seed, the kind of the soil, and the amount of moisture in the soil are some of the important factors which are considered before you start planting the seeds.

Why Are Rows Necessary?
This is a trick an old experienced gardener told me that off marking rows when one was growing vegetables. Even if I was not growing them on a large scale. This uniform spaces between the rows was important on plane ground and except where erosion was being controlled through contour planting, straight, well marked out rows would make your life easier.

Planting Methods

Planting seeds by hand…

In large farms, if people are growing vegetables on a commercial scale, they are going to invest in machine planters of some kind or the other. However, ordinary gardeners like you and me have to look at other easier methods of planting, with which we can plant the seeds or the plants economically, without too much waste or haste.
Common seed drills can help open furrows, drop the seeds, cover them, and also back the soil in just one operation. By the regulation of the rate of seed being sown, you can do the thinning by reducing it to the minimum. There are a number of seed drills available easily in the market, all of which you can use satisfactorily in your home garden.

I use a large vet hypodermic syringe for dribbling my seeds in the furrows. I can regulate the flow of seeds by just pushing the plunger and sow the seeds in a forward motion. At the same time, I am also on the lookout for little insects including ants which are going to be really glad to this new seed feast to them by their friend, the gardener.

Watering Your Plants
A plant set in very dry soil should be watered unless there is a block or a ball of moist soil around its roots. The water should be applied around the roots and the wet soil covered with tryouts to prevent baking. In hand planting as little soil is usually packed around the roots and then the water is poured into the depression. After the water disappears, the hole is filled with the dry soil from around the plant.

The transplanting machine is going to apply the water around the roots, and this is going to be done in such small quantities that the surface of the soil is not puddled.

Using Plant Protectors
Using plant protectors have been in usage down the centuries, and so many people know the worth of paper caps and even empty inverted Coca-Cola or any other soft drink bottles is the best kind of protector to protect individual plants and mounds of plants or seeds in the seedbed.
Paper protectors are very common, especially in California, for protecting musk melon and cantaloupes and other tender plants. These protectors are also helpful in starting warm season crops in your fields. So if you are starting out your plants early, use these paper protectors to help protect them from the harsh winds, especially when your plans have been planted outdoors.

This book has given you plenty of information on how you can plant vegetables in the open, and protect them from harsh weather to get a good bountiful harvest, year after year.
Remember when you are using paper protectors, shielding your plants is the first priority, and you are going to get mature plants, much before time, if proper attention is given to the plants when the protectors are in use and they are prevent from being damaged through a little bit of sense during the cold weather.

You may want to go online and look for sites pertaining to your particular areas, to tell you all about the best time to plant vegetables and fruit in your garden or land. You can also take the advice of experienced gardeners, nursery people, market gardeners, and other agriculture, horticulture, and garden enthusiasts in your city or area. Remember That Land Is Yours, God Has Given the Land to You, This Beautiful Land to Call Your Own. And this is where the food for your children is going to be grown!
So feed your family and the one standing at your doors, Live Long and Prosper!

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