If you’ve decided to give growing your own food a go, there’s some planning tips you’ll want to follow. Growing your own produce is rewarding and beneficial to the environment, but it does require a bit of a learning curve to get it right.
Here, we’ll look at some of the best planning tips to follow this year and beyond to achieve the perfect harvest.
Start Off Small
If you are going to start growing your own food, it’s best to start off small. This is especially true if you’re completely new to gardening.
Some fruits and vegetables can take a lot of knowledge and effort to grow. Remember too, that the more produce you plant, the more hours you’ll need to spend tending to them. It’s much better to start by trying to grow a particular type of produce. Once you’ve mastered that, you can branch out into other produce.
Ensure You Use Rich Soil
In order to grow healthy, thriving produce, you’re going to need to make sure they have rich soil. Ideally, you’ll want to choose organic soil. However, you can also use your own compost if you make it ahead of planting the produce. Adding compost to the soil every year helps to add plenty of nutrients to the plants.
Don’t Forget to Rotate Your Crops
When growing vegetables, it’s important to remember to rotate your crops. This means changing their position each year. There are a few reasons why this is important. Mostly, it helps with pest control. Pests can target vegetable crops year after year once they know where they are. The plants will also be exposed to disease and they can zap nutrients from the soil.
By rotating them annually, you won’t need to use as much natural pesticide, plus you’ll be able to ensure the vegetables receive good soil nutrition.
Compost Leftovers for Soil Nutrition
If you want your produce to thrive, you’ll want to make sure you place leftover food in a compost pile. You can add vegetable peelings and fruit cores to compost to add nutrients. This will help to really boost the health of the plants you’re growing, resulting in much better harvests.
It’s important to remember here that you can’t place animal products into the compost. You’ll find it useful to research more about creating your own compost and the items that can and cannot go into it.
Create Your Own Back Yard Ecosystem
To achieve great harvests year after year, why not consider setting up your own little back yard ecosystem? This basically means adding trees and flowers to enhance local wildlife. The right insects can keep pests at bay. Read up on creating an ecosystem in your garden and see if it’s a viable solution for you.
These are some of the best tips you can follow when planning your sustainable garden. It’s possible to grow your own fruit and vegetables no matter how little space you have available. The key is to plan ahead and research as much as you can about sustainable gardening.
