Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide

When I was first introduced to gardening, I wouldn’t say I liked it. That’s right. Nothing about it appealed to me. I didn’t like vegetables, fruit, dirt, worms, spiders, centipedes, and sweating. Why would I add this chore to my life when I had an excellent store where I could easily ignore those foods? 

Over time I have realized the peace and joy of gardening and preserving food for a minimal cost. There is truth to the saying, ‘You will have to spend both money and time. Which do you want to spend more of?” In today’s economy, gardening is cheaper and healthier for us than purchasing produce. When finances are tight, knowing you have food is a huge relief. We often would ‘eat our freezer’ because that’s what we could afford. It saved us many times, especially during the COVID era.

On this page, I will walk you through everything you need to know before you begin. Everything that I have learned and continue learning is here. So, without further adieu, let’s get into the dirt.

Benefits of Starting a Vegetable Garden

  • Healthy options on hand at all times
  • A full cold room means never worrying about running to the grocery for that missed produce
  • Your impact on the environment will be less.
  • Less financial stress when grocery shopping (quality produce is not cheap, ya’ll).
  • It’s a great family project that gets your children away from tech and outside.
  • Working in the dirt can help your mental health. (https://www.colorado.edu/today/2019/05/09/natures-original-stress-buster). 

Essential Tools and Materials

If any of you know someone who is a tradesperson, they will tell you that the right tools make all the difference in getting the job done quickly and effectively. Here’s a list of tools to help you get started.

  • Optional, but helpful tools
    • Soil Thermometer
    • Knee pad or short stool
    • 5-gallon buckets (for collecting unseeded weeds for your compost)
  • Tools for harvest
    • Fry chopper
    • Cookie sheets
    • Jars (wide mouth is easiest for later, but regular mouth is easier to find)
    • Lids (always need a new lid)
    • Pressure canner (not necessary, but incredibly helpful)
    • Vacuum sealer (I would argue necessary but others use ziplock bags)
    • Canning tools (jar lifter and funnel)
    • Jar sealer (for dry goods)

Planning Your Vegetable Garden

Choosing the Right Location:

Here are some questions and answers to think about when choosing the right location:

Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
  • My ground is constantly wet, what should I do?
    • First off, find out why the ground is wet. Is it pooling only after rain and then drains off? Is it marshy? Is there a spring nearby? Is your ground made of clay? The answers to these questions will help you decide on where to put your garden.
    • A lot of those issues can be solved with a French drain like in this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsV4fFDxM9s
Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
  • I have a lot of forest on my property, how do I get the greatest amount of sun?
    • The answer is simple… cut down some trees. Realistically, you want to have at least 30 feet of cleared land away from your home for fire protection. By clearing that 30 feet, you have created space for your garden to get the sunlight it needs.
Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
  • I don’t get a lot of rain and my soil is dry.
    • I understand this one, particularly. Some years we get tons of rain and then some years we get close to none. Place your garden closest to your water source and use hoses to help with irrigation 

Deciding on Garden Type:

There are a few options for your garden type and each comes with its pros and cons.

Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
  • Raised beds (where you place weed control down and place a large bin for your garden)
    • Pro
      • Control over soil quality
      • Easy drainage
      • Weed Control
      • Can be accessible depending on the height of the bed
    • Con
      • Can be costly in both money and time depending on the materials used
      • Grass weed can get deeply rooted if not careful
      • If using metal it can get hot in the summer
      • If using wood, it will need to be replaced after a few years.
Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
  • In-ground garden (where you remove sod and till the ground)
    • Pro
      • Very little prep. Simply till the ground and throw seeds in
      • It costs only what you need to spend on tools and seeds
      • There’s a natural ecosystem built right in to help 
      • The water retention is higher
    • Con
      • Easier for pests such as rodents to eat what grows
      • Harder to control soil quality
      • If you have a lot of water, it’s easier to rot/drown your produce
      • More weeds, so more labour each year.
  • Container Gardening (Primarily in portable pots)
    • Pro
      • Great for urban gardens where you may not have land to work with.
      • Easy to control soil quality
      • If done right, your plants will never drown
      • Minimal cost
    • Con
      • Limited space for diverse plants
      • Needs to be watered regularly
      • Limited root space, so plants may be stunted and not produce to full capabilities
      • Temperature matters with plants and it’s harder to control in a pot.

There are several more gardening methods than these three, but they are the more common ones. You can do only one or a combination of them, depending on what you need. For example, we use raised beds for the bulk of our food, but I want to make a hanging herb garden inside.

Creating a Garden Layout:

So, you have now decided on the type of bed. From here, there is no need to be fancy. Set up your beds into rows and get started. If you want to be more creative, you can add flowers for pollination and pest control.  I know I need to add benches to rest on while I enjoy the beauty of my work. It’s up to you how you lay them out. Here are a few notes to take into account

  • If you are not laying down a path, I would advise spacing your beds far enough apart for either a ride-on or push mower. That grass will grow too tall and bleed into your beds otherwise. 
  • If you want a quick path, you can lay down cardboard (diaper and pull-up boxes for the win!) and then spread wood chips on top. Be sure to wet them down so they stay put. The perk of this method is that after a year, you can make them into a pile to use as mulch later in the growing season. (put video of using wood chips for path)
  • Take into account your landscape. Are you on a slight slope? You may need to terrace your beds or dig into the hill, depending on the steepness of the angle. 
  • Start small! Gardening is quite a bit of work, so don’t go planting a dozen beds at the start. Go with two and a couple of crops, to get the feel of it. 

Choosing Vegetables to Grow:

  1. There are several things to consider when choosing which vegetables to grow. The number one, in my opinion, is to grow what you will eat. It’s all well and good to grow a diverse crop, but if you aren’t going to eat it, then what’s the point? An example: I hate peas. Hate them with a passion. If I never see another pea in my life, it would be too soon. My husband, however, enjoys canned peas in his cream peas on toast. Yuck… yuck yuck yuck… but I eat things he thinks are gross, so I guess it’s fair. I grow peas so that he can have things he likes. If it were up to me, I’d never grow peas. 
  2. The second thing I would consider is your environment. Where I live in eastern Canada, I’m unlikely to grow sugar cane. Beans, peas, and carrots, however, do rather well. Squash tends to grow ridiculously well here too. 
  3. The third, particularly for new gardeners, is to pick plants that give you the most bang for your buck and time. Certain types of green beans will grow long and thick, resulting in more food for your family. Other green beans will grow short and thin, resulting in less. Peas are a ton of work for very little end produce (have I mentioned just how much I don’t like peas! I do enjoy shelling them… not sure why… but eating them? Again, YUCK!) You can get away with only a handful of green bean plants, while you may need several garden beds of peas to get the same quantity of food. That said, if YOU hate beans but love peas, you can have your head examined and then plant your peas to your heart’s content.

Here is a short list of easy starting plants for your first vegetable garden:

Preparing the Soil

Testing Your Soil

Like a house with a faulty foundation, if you don’t have healthy soil, your plants will not do well. You need a combination of nitrogen and carbon to produce the soil that plants thrive in. If you are creating your own beds out of your own mixture, you don’t need to test it. However, if you are direct planting, you may want to test your soil to ensure healthy plants.

Improving Soil Quality

The best way, to improve soil quality is to do so over time. You can do this using compost comprised of carbon matter (leaves, dead foliage, wood chips, etc etc) and hydrogen matter (food scraps). I also highly recommend sourcing coffee grounds from your local gas station, coffee shop, or home. It will help expedite your composting, keeping it moist and breaking it down efficiently. 


Anne of All Trades

Tilling the Soil

Regardless of what type of bed you use, when you plant, you will want to loosen up your soil. You want to be careful because you don’t want to harm any of the beneficial creatures that call your garden bed home.

  • For raised beds, run a garden rake up and down to loosen the top layer for planting. 
  • For in-ground beds, you will have to till up a more substantial section to break up any unwanted plants that are already there. The perk of in ground is that below where you have till should be all those good gross creatures.
  • For container plants, you’ll likely want to regularly refresh your soil anyway, as it is unlikely to have those creatures. That will result in some nice loose soil.

Planting Your Vegetable Garden

What’s a vegetable garden without vegetables? Now that you have figured out what to plant, it’s time to figure out how to plant. Seeds look wonderful in their little packages, but they look far better as produce on your shelf. Each plant requires a specific method of planting that results in the best germination (growth). As a friend of mine learned the hard way, you want to do that research before purchasing the seeds. Please don’t buy them because they look pretty.

Direct Sow vs. Seedlings:

Direct Sow

  • Pros
    • Less space is taken up in the house.
    • Less work than transplanting
    • Less cost than starting a seedling
    • Some plants perform best when directly sown
  • Cons
    • If you plant to early, your seed could very well not germinate due to cold
    • If you do not get rain, you will need to irrigate regularly (more difficult when in the city and they charge for water usage)
    • Some plants have a longer growth time than your season. 
    • Can lose tiny seeds in the soil

Seedlings

  • Pros
    • More control over the seedling environment, increasing germination
    • Control over soil content
    • Extends the growing season, giving you more food options
    • Easier to control how many seeds you plant
  • Cons
    • Need a dedicated temporary space for seedlings
    • Higher cost to set up
    • Additional work to plant the seedlings
    • Some plants will not survive transplanting

In all honesty, most people do a combination of direct sow and seedlings. You don’t have to choose just one method. Choose what works best for you in your situation. 

When and How to Plant

This is an area that I am still learning but there are several wonderful resources to help you figure out exactly when and how to plant crops. Here are a few:

Project Diaries
Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide
Dig Plant Water Repeat

Caring for Your Vegetable Garden

Gardening is not something that you can just plant and leave. It requires checking in on and caring. It is something you need to add to your weekly, if not daily, task list. It is a high priority as we don’t want to put a lot of effort and funds into it only to have it produce nothing due to neglect.

Watering Basics

As I said above, you want at least one solid day a week of rain to have natural watering, two would be best. If you don’t get that for a couple of weeks, you will want to water manually. You can use a rainfall sprinkler system, or soaker hoses, depending on where your plants are in their germination process. 

Fertilizing Your Plants

Here at Hesitant Root, we prefer organic fertilizers over synthetic, as said above. (I don’t even know the first thing about synthetic, to be honest. I have only ever used chicken poop.) The exception to that would be the Big Ass brand of fertilizer and I use that when germinating a seedling. Make sure that the organic matter is no longer decomposing as that can burn your plant. 

Weed Control

The best way to prevent weeds is to mulch heavily and even then, more often than not, you need to make sure you weed at least weekly, otherwise they can take over the whole garden (grass is the bane of my existence when it comes to weeds!). I know some people who will weed one bed a day and tend those plants for that day. As a result, they are only out in the garden for fifteen to thirty minutes a day. 

This is an area that I am still learning. This year we had a huge ant infestation in two of our beds and I didn’t handle it well. We must remember that some pests (like spiders… shudder) are wanted as they also help with soil quality. That said, in researching for this conversation, I have discovered that some plants can help keep down unwanted/unhelpful pests and diseases when you do companion planting. Here’s the list:

Pest and Disease Management

Start Your Vegetable Garden: A Simple Beginner’s Guide

Harvesting Your Vegetables

YAY! Your plants are ready to become food for your family!!!!! 

Signs of Readiness:

Some plants are very easy to recognize for readiness. Peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries turn a bright red. Blueberries turn bright blue. Other plants are more difficult to tell. Peas reach a certain firmness when they are ready to be picked. Poll beans reach a certain length. Potatoes die! (well… the plant part does anyway). 

Here’s a video to help you identify when some plants are ready to be harvested.

Garden Know How

10. Conclusion and Next Steps

YOU DID IT! You made it to the end of this post! If you have, I am so proud of you! It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the information. That said, I don’t want you to stop here. Producing food for your family is its own reward. It makes the winter months easier when there is a storm and you can’t figure out what to make for supper. If you are going through a rough time financially, it lowers the grocery bill. Life is far simpler when you have what you need already. Make your life simpler in the long run by working hard now. It’s worth it.