I’ll admit it. Most vegetable gardening tips out there sucks.
See, vegetable growing isn’t all that sexy, and at times, it gets a lot of hate.
Most cases, the annoyance, makes sense. At some point, you’ve felt the excitement of growing your food, either to supplement your diet or just make some extra bucks.
Or maybe, as an agribusiness venture.
You’ve meticulously prepared your media, brought best quality seeds or seedlings, quickly grown them and waited for a flourishing garden.
Of course, you’ve done everything possible.
Surprisingly nothing happens!
You wait some more and then reality hits you like a sharp slap in the face.
The only thing that happens, little germination, seedlings wilting out, those that survive starts turning yellow (chlorosis) and stunts.
Ultimately suboptimal yields.
On the flipside, yes you get a bountiful harvest, but you have nowhere to take the surplus.
Then you start wondering what the heck is happening! You are left wondering if that was worth all the trouble of soiling your hands in the dirt not to mention the physical exertion.
Ever been in that situation?
I have. Not once, not twice but a couple of times.
But really, vegetable gardening shouldn’t be all that hassle if done the right way.
Over time, I have learned that there is a formula to achieve garden profitability. I’m talking about the kind of profits you can depend on.
How do I know?
In the United States alone, gardeners made a total of $22.7 million worth of income in 2014. The chart below actually sheds more light on this.
The trend keeps on moving upwards with each passing year. This trend can be attributed to the fact that consumers are becoming more aware of health benefits derived from vegetables.
Furthermore, the world population keeps growing creating a bigger market for fresh produce as well as the need for food sufficiency both locally and internationally.
I’m amazed every time I read this quote by Michelle Obama,
“We can make a commitment to promote vegetables and fruits and whole grains on every part of every menu. We can make portion sizes smaller and emphasize quality over quantity. And we can help create a culture – imagine this – where our kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.”
What next?
The potential for vegetable production is enormous. I want you to tap into this potential and reap big.
That’s why today, I want to start a series of detailed, actionable posts that are going to walk you through the process of successful vegetable gardening.
I’m inviting you on this adventurous journey to discover how ordinary things can be made extraordinary.
In this series, I want to highlight in detail very crucial vegetable gardening tips for both beginners and seasoned pros. The process is a step by step gardening ideas that are going to take all of us on a journey.
To start us off on this series, I want to suggest 9 blog posts that we will have to go through to achieve our final goal.
I’ll include a link to each post that follows in this series as I update them. I can’t guarantee the timeframe but promise to update as soon as practicable.
While these vegetable gardening tips won’t guarantee instant results, I believe they’ll put you on the right track of ultimately achieving increased productivity.
9 Vegetable gardening tips to increase your yield.
Planning a vegetable garden
Take time to plan your entire garden to align with your objectives. Different goals will have different operations. Consider which plants grow best in your locale, what to produce, how much to produce, sowing and harvest time.
Growing media
Perhaps one of the most crucial parts. You have a choice of whether to use hydroponics or soil or both. Establish the condition of your media and decide whether you need to condition it or use it as it is.
Lucrative and nutritious vegetables
You may want to produce a piece of gold but as long as no consumer is willing to pay for it, or no value concerning nutrition, you can as well boil rocks to obtain a cup of soup! This step is where you’ll have to evaluate your goals and decide what enterprise best suits your goals.
Seeds and Seed selection/Planting materials
Seed quality and viability matters. Choose only good seeds that are clean, pure and a high germination percentage. The question has always been how to ascertain the quality of seeds purchased. When acquiring planting materials be sure to have the end in mind as of what characteristics are desirable.
Planting vegetables
Execution. It’s paramount to consider the spacing (Inter and Intra-row spacing), planting depth and densities as well as the necessary planting fertilizers.
Caring for the vegetables
Most Integral. After germination and emergence, appropriate care is critical. Provide proper nutrition and water supply, protect from pest and diseases through regular monitoring, safeguard against the extreme wind, excessive sun, and high temperatures.
Maturity and Maturity indices – How do you tell when your vegetables are ready for harvesting? Of course, there is a science behind this. However, to keep things simple, all you have to do is to consider the market requirements. Research on what the market wants and give it to them. For an instant, do they require your produce fresh, dried or frozen?
Harvest and post-harvest care – You’ve done all the work. Now it’s time for reaping what you sow. But still, you need a strategy. You don’t want anything to happen to your produce inform of damages, shriveling or quality losses at this stage. Protect what you’ve toiled to grow.
Marketing of vegetables
Here is the twist; marketing is the first step in the whole process and probably the most important. But I have decided to put it last because that’s what tradition has taught us. Value addition is king here.
More information found here.
Final thoughts
Remember, whether you want to grow vegetables for personal use, as a hobby or for commercial purposes these posts will help you. For some, it happens so automatically that they don’t even realize they have gone through all of them.
For others, it sounds like a horrible big maze. Taking time on each of these 9 vegetable gardening tips might seem like rocket science – but I believe that every extra moment spent of these posts pay off.
Over the next weeks or probably months, I’ll be tackling each of the 9 posts in the vegetable gardening tips series in much more details.
I’ll demonstrate how other professionals and I are going about them. I will also be hoping that we can have an intense discussion and sharing of ideas around them. As I promised, I’ll link to each one of them from within the list above as I release the posts.
Have you enjoyed the post? Let me know what you think.
Extremely interesting post! Most of the people never pay attention to the importance of gardening and how actually to create a very good quality products. However, I want to do the things in a perfect way, so your recommendations are very helpful. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the compliment Danielle. I’m totally in agreement with you that most people rarely pay enough attention to gardening. Glad you’re not one of them.