How To Get Your Garden In Shape This Summer

by Stewart Gibson

Growing your own fruit and vegetables

 

By far the most rewarding garden activity, growing your own fruit and vegetables is not only cost effective but revitalizes your garden giving back important nutrients and phosphates to the earth in which to nourish the soil and allow for better plant growth in the future. There are a few steps to growing your own vegetable patch and some tools you will need to help achieve this.

Step 1: Dig out the desired size of your vegetable patch/ you can also use vegetable beds or a greenhouse.

Step 2: Put a natural fertilizer/ topsoil on the ground soil, this is where you will plant your fruit and veg, you can also apply a plant growth product throughout the topsoil.

Step 3: Dig several small 2-inch holes into the soil and place the desired seed or bulb into the soil, at this stage you can once again apply a plant growth product allowing extra nutrients to the plant.

Step 4: Fill the holes with topsoil and water the plant, make sure not to overwater your plant or you could suffocate or drown the plant. Ensure you water the plant daily especially in hot weather.

After a number of weeks your plant will begin to blossom and bloom, at this stage it is vital to continue to water and plant nutrients throughout the soil to allow for maximum growth of the plant and a healthy produce to be harvested.

Harvesting your plants

 

This is the moment you have been building to for several months. Depending on different plant species, harvesting can be different as some plants require the stem to be cut to allow for future growth of a new stock. For our purposes, the whole plant/ root system can be removed as we will replant new seeds next harvest.

To do this simply remove the plant from the soil or pick the veg of the main stem of the plant when fully ripe, for peppers, this can vary as red peppers take longer to ripen or you can harvest them when they are green but will be slightly less sweet.

After you have harvested all your plants remove any plant waste from the soil- dead stems or used stems, apply a revitalizing agent to the soil to allow the soil to soak up nitrates for the next plant.

Browse our range of exotic plant seeds