Starting Out from Scratch
There are a few things you should decide before planting a vegetable garden such as the amount of sunlight your plants are going to get, size of vegetable garden, initial budget and ability to maintain the vegetable garden.
You should also decide if you are planting a vegetable patch primarily for fun, or you expect to try and source a significant portion of your yearly vegetables organically, in which case you may like to focus on high produce crops.
Starting a Vege Patch
Well you probably need a bit of garden to start with. I have made over a dozen vege patches for our home, friends gardens and old rent a houses. My favourite patch of all was our old share house because we basically turned a patch of grass into a patch with twelve 2 metre high tomato plants which fed the whole house with tomatoes for the summer. Why was it my favourite? Because it was poor soil and within a few months we had it ready to plant. Ok so how do we get going?
Getting started with my first vege patch
First decide how much space in your garden you want to turn into a vege patch. It is best to choose a space near a fence line or next to paving as this reduces the amount of grass you will need to keep out. You should also be mindful that if the vege patch is going to be there for a long time, you will want to keep it away from tree roots as much as possible. If you really don't have the room, or live in an apartment, you can always grow some plants in pots, although there is not a lot you can do bar sticking some seeds in pre made potting mix and watering.
Now that you have your area selected, you will need to dig out all the grass roots. This is the tough bit. You will find things easier with a pitch fork to sift the soil out of the roots. You want to keep as much of the top soil as you can. This is the soil that hangs around the grass roots. If digging is not your forte, then you can also lay newspaper or old carpet matting down over the grass which will eventually kill the grass making it much easier to dig over. You should however still remove the major grass roots, or you will have a never ending weeding battle on your hands.
Now you might even want to go that extra step and sift the rocks out of the soil. This is important if you are growing carrots or parsnips as they will hit small rocks and deform into interesting shapes. You can be sure that with rocky soil you will be serving up mutant carrots for dinner! You may also want to go that extra step and line the bed with black plastic sheeting and put sleepers round the bed to stop grass shoots entering the patch. My advice however is that you start simple and give it a go for one season. Then if you think it is the way to go and you can spare the time to maintain such a hobby, go the extra steps and invest a little more time and money to get a long term root free patch going. I have even seen vegetable patches elevated in wooden boxes with water capturing underneathe to collect runoff water and nutrients.
Ok assuming that you have your patch grass free, with a sleeper or two to define the area, you are ready for soil enhancement phase. Now this is where most people including myself have typically gone wrong. You feel so proud to have made this earthy looking patch you just want to run out and buy every vege under the sun and get it growing, but alas my friends, your plants will struggle with what little nutritional value is left in the grass ravaged soil.
Improving the soil
If you have compost going, this will add a lot of nutrients to the soil, but assuming you don't, there is one option that remains. You will need to work in a few packs of soil conditioner. Now the difference between soil conditioner and fertiliser, is that soil conditioner enhances the biological breakdown of matter which triggers the production of nutrients in the soil, where as fertiliser is really just a quick fix. Conditioner also enhances the wetting process of the soil by filling out the earth with broken down leaf matter. Now it is recommended that you work in the soil conditioner and wait a few weeks for the soil to get conditioned, but if you are like me, and incredibly impatient, you might want to just jump straight into it. If you do this however, you will probably need to take that extra bit of care to keep your plants healthy. It doesn't hurt to throw in some fertiliser before you plant, although don't over do it as it will just wash away and your plants will be very small to start with.
If you would like to have a look at a vegetable garden which was installed recently, have a look at project vegetable patch.
