Start a vegetable garden and those dreams of fresh homegrown produce can be yours! Do you dream of eating juicy cherry tomatoes off the vine or pulling your carrots for dinner right out of the ground or shelling peas picked seconds before you taste them? Freshly harvested produce has a sweetness which cannot be matched and is a delight which gardeners relish year after year. The great news is that you can have it too and starting a vegetable garden from scratch can be done in a weekend!
This post contains affiliate links: I am grateful to be of service and bring you content free of charge. In order to do this, please note that when you click links and purchase items; in most (but not all) cases I will receive a referral commission. Your support in purchasing through these links enables me to keep blogging to help you start homesteading and it doesn’t cost you a penny extra!
See Disclosure, Terms and Conditions for more information. Thank you for supporting Misfit Gardening.
Growing a garden is amazing and I’m so glad you want to start one! I want you to experience the excitement you get when seedlings first sprout from the soil and the wonderful sense of accomplishment you get when you harvest your first fruit of vegetable that you grew yourself with a little help from nature! Here’s how to start a vegetable garden in 6 easy steps!
If you just want to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in, then have a listen to my podcast and learn some quick garden set ups you can do, even if you just have concrete.
Step 1: Where To Start A Vegetable Garden
Go outside to your yard and see where the sun is shining around your yard at different times throughout the day. Take pictures of your yard so you have a reference point later.
- Go outside first thing, where is the early morning sun shining on?
- Go out again late morning or early afternoon to see how the sun has moved, what shadows have formed.
- Finally go out again in the late afternoon or early evening to see where the sun is shining in your garden and what is now in shade.
This is an important step because growing veggies means you need sunlight and whilst there are some veggies you can grow in the shade you will have better yields with plenty of sunshine.
The ideal garden space has 6 or more hours of sunlight a day, when you find where you have the most sunlight in your yard, plan to put your garden beds there.
Step 2: Start Your Beds Small
Smaller beds are easier to manage when it comes to gardening and you can maximize the sunlight by orientating them north to south. Most people grow in rows and have rectangular or square beds that are usually no wider than 6 feet to that you can access the middle ground for weeding, planting, and harvesting. My own garden has raised beds which are 5 ft long by 2 ft wide and some keyhole beds in other parts of the yard.
A grid pattern is the easiest on flat ground but if you live on a slope, consider terraced garden beds and orientate the beds to follow along the slope.
Step 3: Build Your Garden Beds
I much prefer raised beds. They help the garden look presentable, even in winter. they are easy to cover and easy to convert to a hoop house for season extension later. Raised beds don’t require digging meaning you can get your garden started much easier and quicker.
You can build a raised bed really easily with cinder (breeze) blocks, bricks, wood scraps even cardboard to name a few and best of all you can often make raised beds for free!
If you are placing your new garden on top of weeds or grass/lawn then I highly recommend flattening out several cardboard boxes and placing them over the area your garden will be. This will smother the grass and weeds but will allow worms, water, and nutrients to move through. The cardboard will eventually break down and you will have far fewer weed problems.
Place the raised bed on top of the cardboard and fill with raised bed soil, compost and a shovelful or two of well-rotted farmyard manure.
If you opt for traditional tilling, you will need to remove the turf and dig down at least 1 shovel deep and turn over the soil. You can till the bed faster with a garden tiller
Tilled beds can look just as nice as raised beds too!
A good tip for suburban and urban gardeners is to keep your garden maintained and the weeds down to keep the neighbors happy.
Step 4: Planting Your Garden Beds Up
Now that your garden beds are made you can start the fun job of planting it up! To get your garden going super fast, get some plant starts from the local nursery or online. Check out local Facebook gardening or suburban homesteading groups, Craigslist and local classifieds as well for some plant starts. If you are not sure what to grow some easy vegetables to start with are:
- Radishes – I love Cherry Belle and French Breakfast varieties.
- Spinach – Bloomsdale Longstanding is a rockstar heirloom variety for my Utah garden.
- Pole Beans – Kentucky Wonder are reliable croppers.
- Zucchini – Gold Rush is a yellow summer squash whilst Black Beauty is an easy to find dark green variety.
- Tomato – Gardener’s Delight are tasty cherry tomatoes whilst Purple Cherokee one of my favorite slicing tomatoes to grow.
- Lettuce – I grow a local summer Bibb variety but cut and come again lettuce mixes are easy to find.
- Kale – Vates Blue Curled and Ragged Jack are popular.
- Swiss Chard – Bright Lights make a beautiful garden and plate.
Related Post: How to Choose Vegetables to Grow in Your Garden.
When you first build your garden it’s sooooooooo tempting to want to fill every bed with all of your seeds and seedlings but I implore you to start small and don’t be tempted, no matter how many seeds are in a packet to grow any more than ONE zucchini plant!!!!!!
If you plant everything on one day or one weekend, all of your crops will be ready to harvest at the same time meaning harvest overload and you will be struggling to cook, eat and preserve what you have harvested before it spoils.
To avoid feeling sad at yet another plate of kale for dinner for the last 3 weeks sow a few seeds into the garden bed every 2 or 4 weeks. This means you will have a steady harvest of a vegetable without a massive amount all ripe at once.
Step 5: Water & Mulch
Once you have planted your plant starts in the soil, give them a good drink of water then mulch the bed.
No matter what sort of bed you have created, mulch around your plant starts with grass clippings, woodchips or straw to keep the weeds out and the water in. Mulching is a gardener’s best friend after compost! To apply the mulch, leave about an inch from the plant stem to avoid damage or rotting.
I use organic mulches which helps build the soil year after year rather than using black plastic mulch, however, black plastic mulch is great for warming the soil if you live in colder areas and can help you grow great warm-weather crops like hot peppers, squash, and tomatoes.
Step 6: Start Composting
Compost is a gardener’s gold and will help to keep your garden soil healthy. Compost will feed your garden with lots of nutrients your plants will use to grow healthy and strong. Healthy plants will fend off pests and disease much better too!
Compost your kitchen vegetable peels, bits of fruit, coffee grinds, tea bags, shredded newspaper, and cut flowers whilst your garden gets established. Once you start harvesting and clearing space in your garden bed you can add that material to your compost bin too.
Keep adding to your compost bin then at the end of the season, add any finished compost to your garden bed to feed the plants for next spring.
Starting a vegetable garden from scratch can easily be done in a weekend and by starting small, you are setting yourself up for great success!
To get the very best from your garden, make sure to locate your garden where your plants will get at least 6 hours of sun a day and orientate your beds north to south. Build your garden beds by smothering the grass or weeds with cardboard then place a frame or border on top and fill in with soil or, remove the turf and dig over the ground pulling out any weeds and roots you find. For a fast garden, plant some plant starts into your new garden bed, water then mulch with grass clippings or straw.
Will you be starting a vegetable garden this year? Let me know in the comments!
If you liked this post please take a moment to share it using the share buttons below or pin the image below to Pinterest and save it for later and join us over on YouTube to get to know me and my homestead in the suburbs.
As remuneration for running this blog, this post contains affiliate links. Misfit Gardening is a participant in Affiliate or Associate’s programs. An affiliate advertising program is designed to provide a means for this website/blog to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to websites offering products described in the blog post. It does not cost you the Reader anything extra. See Disclosures, Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy for more information.
Share this:
