Plant a vegetable garden to save money, protect health

Have you been experiencing sticker shock every time you go to the grocery store? Have you ever held off buying lettuce, spinach or tomatoes because of a scary news story about e. coli or salmonella? Have you read the articles attributing cancer, hormonal abnormalities and neurological disorders to pesticides and fertilizers?


If any of these are of concern to you, there is a solution: Grow your own vegetables this year. About 7 million Americans will be starting their first vegetable garden in 2009 and many people with existing gardens will be enlarging them.

To get started, decide what you’d like to grow. Plant what you like to eat fresh and what you might freeze, can or dehydrate. And then try something new as well. If you have children, get them involved. With guidance, they can plant the larger seeds, and water, weed and harvest. If you have the space, give them their own section of the garden to take care of. Research shows that children who participate in growing vegetables are much more eager to eat the vegetables they’ve grown than ones that come from a can.

Start small the first year so that you are not overwhelmed. A good starter size for vegetable gardens is 10 feet by 20 feet, or 20 feet by 20 feet. You can always expand next year.

To site your garden, you need a spot that gets at least eight hours of full sun each day, has good drainage, won’t be competing with tree or shrub roots and has access to water.

Remove the sod, till up the soil and add organic matter such as bagged compost. The first few years, it’s a good idea to plan your garden on graph paper. Seed packets will tell you how far apart to space seeds and rows so you can get a good idea of how much you’ll be able to plant. If you decide to use transplants instead of seeds, there should be a tag stuck in the soil pack with the same information.

The seed packets also give information on how deep to plant the seeds, days to germination and days to harvest. These are approximate dates – soil type, temperature, water and many other factors can affect germination and growth.

Sometimes the packets have a picture of the seedling so you’ll be able to distinguish them from weeds.

Easy plants for beginners are carrots, onions, peas, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, zucchini, cucumbers and peppers. You’ll probably want to buy transplants of the tomatoes and peppers. Onions can be started from seeds or sets, which are baby-sized onions.

Make your vegetable garden look nice by including some easy-to-grow annual flowers. They can either surround the bed or be planted in rows or blocks between the vegetables. They will also attract pollinators to the vegetable plants. Good flowers for vegetable gardens are zinnias, marigolds, cleome and cosmos.

Once the soil warms up, about mid-June, lay straw, hay or grass clippings as a mulch between the rows. This will keep the weeds down, hold soil temperatures more constant and conserve water.