Principles of Vegetable Garden Design

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

In order to have a quality garden, you need to make sure that your vegetable garden design is up to par. Otherwise, your yields and the strength of your crops will diminish, which is counterproductive to the goals of any gardener. By following a few tips when designing your garden, you can set yourself up for future and prolonged success.  These garden design tips can really be useful, as long as you actually implement them.

You want your garden to be as large as possible, while retaining the ability to easily tend it. Since you don’t want to walk around on top of your garden, you can only make it so wide, usually between three and five feet. Whatever is most comfortable for you should be pursued, but you can’t make the garden bed too small or you will have limited success. If you have a particularly long build, use that to your advantage when implementing your vegetable garden design.

What you plant in your garden is up to you. You don’t need to worry about any plant inhibiting another, so you can mix all types of vegetables and flowers together. Some people like to separate the flowers and vegetables, while others like to combine them in the same bed since they believe it increases the beauty of the garden. If you are more interested in yields and not the appearance of the garden, then you should focus only on growing vegetables. Otherwise, it is good to plant flowers in your vegetable garden, as they complement the beauty of the growing crops very well.

Another major decision is whether to buy already growing crops and plant those or start from seed. By taking the latter route, you will have complete control over the growing and you can breed plants together at will to create interesting varieties of colors. This is certainly more advanced, but if you become proficient in doing this, the visual rewards will be more than worth it.

Besides the plants, there are many other things you can add to enhance your vegetable garden design. This includes ornamental statues and other stone figures. They should not be overused, but a few of them can work out really well, especially if some of your crops are not doing as well as you would like them to. The other things in the garden will distract you and other viewers from some of the lackluster crops. Even if all of your crops are doing fine, having some other items in your garden adds variety and boldness.

Using Crop Rotation in Your Vegetable Garden Design

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Vegetable garden design techniques have changed throughout the years, and have become more efficient based on today’s more crowded environment. Despite the progressive lessening in the space available for vegetable gardens, changes in design have kept output stable.

When it comes to actually setting up the garden, you need to take in to account the need for crop rotation. This technique is necessary to keep the soil healthy and prevent it from being drained too quickly. Improper crop rotation will lower yields for subsequent years.

Crop rotation functions by segmenting your garden and then moving different types of plants around year after year. It is not necessary to rotate the crops more than once a year, as you can realize the full benefits with only an annual rotation.

Vegetables can be classified in to several different categories. First there are the heavy feeders, which utilize a lot of energy (mainly nitrogen) because of their high, leafy output. This category includes corn and lettuce.

Next comes the middle ground feeders, which use less energy than heavy feeders but still need a fair amount. Smaller vegetables like tomatoes are considered to be part of this category.

Light feeders use the least nitrogen out of all the categories. If you only used light feeders and did not use crop rotation, you would probably be fine for many years. In the light feeding category, the plants are very basic and are essentially only the food, like carrots.

Crop rotation would not work if not for the last category, which is the soil building group. These unique plants leave more nitrogen in the ground than they take out. The smallest of plants constitute this class, including beans and peas.

When you rotate crops, the heavy feeders follow the soil builders, medium follows heavy, light follows medium, and builders follow light. This ensures that the heavy feeders get the most nitrogen, and keeps the light and middle ground feeders from using more than they need.

Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

The Contech Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler is a unique device that anyone can use to protect their garden. After working so hard to develop a high quality and healthy garden, it can all go to waste if an animal attacks or completely destroys it. There are many ways to defend a garden, but some of them are counterproductive or involve traps and chemicals.

This is where the Scarecrow Sprinkler comes in. It is equipped with motion-detectors, so if an animal gets too close to your garden, it will release a short but strong burst of water. This scares the animal away, and due to the psychological principle of classic conditioning, they will not come back again for a long time, if ever. A necessity for anyone who wants to have the perfect vegetable garden design.

Security is an investment you cannot afford to skip out on. We all think that our gardens are inherently safe, but the reality is, they can be targeted by any creature in the surrounding area.

Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler