Your First Organic Vegetable Garden

The topic is gardening is vast and versatile, with so many options available to you. 
Vegetable gardens are popular and provide a wide range of benefits, from having fresh 
veggies at home to use in cooking, to saving money by growing them yourself.

Another big advantage? You get to control HOW they are grown, especially in terms of 
chemicals or pesticides. Organic vegetables at the supermarket are very expensive, 
and even then, you don’t have 100% confirmation on how they were grown. 

By starting your own organic vegetable garden, every choice is up to you. Plus, you 
have this amazing feeling by knowing you grew your OWN food. 

This report is going to go over what organic gardening is, and some tips for someone 
brand new to growing their own veggies.


1. What is Organic Gardening?

The main difference between organic and conventionally-grown vegetables is in the 
chemicals and pesticides used to grow them. Typically, produce you get in the store 
without the organic label likely came from a large facility where they were grown with 
chemical fertilizers, and sprayed with pesticides. 

These chemicals have raised some concerns with consumers to a large extent over the 
last 15 - 20 years. As time goes on, people are beginning to lose more and more faith in 
the factory farm industry. One of the primary reasons is that there are frequent recalls of 
foods that are produced in these farms, and there have even been some deaths that 
reach national and international news outlets. 

People want to know that the food they eat is safe, and that safety is worth more to 
them than the hike in price they see at the specialty stores. 








What This Means for You

Instead of buying the organic produce at a grocery store, you will be making it yourself. 
This gives you a lot of options in terms of making it as organic as possible, including not 
using harsh fertilizers with chemicals, looking for more natural ways of controlling pests, 
and allowing the natural growth of the produce, instead of adding chemicals to make it a 
larger side or more robust.


2. Where to Start with Your Vegetable Garden

The thought of starting your own garden, particularly when growing your own food, can 
be really intimidating. And while you will absorb a lot of information both her and 
elsewhere when you do your own research, it is not nearly as complicated as it might 
seem.

The most important things you will need to learn include:

Choosing the types of vegetables to grow
Selecting a pot and soil
Knowing when and how much to water
Controlling pests naturally (for organic produce)
General tips for caring for your vegetable garden


Choosing Your Veggies

The first step is to choose your vegetables. This is a good place to start since what you 
intend to grow will often determine where you are going to grow them. Different types of 
vegetables need different amounts of space for growing, different types of soil, and 
varying sunlight. 

Vegetables that are easy to grow – If you are brand new to gardening and have never 
grown a vegetable before, then there are some that are easier to grow than others. 
These include:

Lettuce and spinach
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Green Beans
Bell peppers

Your favorites – It makes sense that you would grow vegetables you enjoy the most. 
Think about what you put in salads or veggies you serve often as side dishes. Do you 
cook with onion every night? Then put that on the list! On the other hand, just because a 
vegetable like spinach is easy to grow, that doesn’t mean you should if your family 
doesn’t enjoy it.

The dirty dozen – Since you are growing organic vegetables, why not choose 
vegetables that are considered the Dirty Dozen – otherwise known as veggies that use 
a lot of pesticides when they are grown conventionally. 

Among them include:

Spinach
Kale
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Celery


Selecting the Plot for Your Garden

Do you know how to pick the best spot for your veggies? Professional farmers will often 
select areas that can run lengthwise from east to west. This is done because it 
maximizes the amount of time that the vegetables will have to be in the sun. 

Vegetables require a good amount of sun, which is somewhere between 6 - 8 hours in 
order to grow to their full potential. Consider your yard or garden area, and look for a 
spot that will get at least 6 hours of full sunlight a day. 

Other things to consider with the plot location:

Will pets get to them? You don’t want them ruined by your dog or cat.
You need them close enough to you to care for regularly.
Make sure the vegetables will have ample space to grow fully.




Prepping the Soil 

The health of the soil where you’ll be growing your vegetables is extremely important. 
This can make or break the success of your vegetable garden. Since you want to grow 
the vegetables organically, this means ditching chemical-ridden fertilizers, and going a 
more natural route.

One of the best ways to have healthy soil for a vegetable garden is with compost. This 
si gong to be completely natural, and is a wonderful way to replace fertilizers in the soil. 
Compost uses organic matter like clippings, sawdust, and wood chips in the soil. 

You can also use mulch, as well as manure in your organic vegetable garden soil.


3. Planting Your Vegetable Garden

Now for the fun part – planting your vegetable garden! Remember that you want to start 
small if this is your first garden. Pick just a couple different vegetables and a relatively 
small plot. If you overwhelm yourself, you might give up and never try again.


Planting

You will need to choose how you will plant the vegetables, such as from seed or 
transferring from a pot that has been started for you. Each of these should also come 
with directions about how to plant it, and how far apart each needs to be.

Make sure the spacing is accurate, since some vegetables yield quite a bit each 
season. Some vegetables that tend to yield more include lettuce, turnips, beans, and 
carrots.


Watering

When it comes to watering, there is a balance between watering enough, and watering 
too much. It can be easy to overwater since you are excited about your garden and 
want to keep tending to it. But this can drown the plants and prevent proper growth. 

In general, you shouldn’t be watering more than 2-3 times a week, though more might 
be required in a hot, dry climate. When your garden looks and feels dry, you know it’s 
time to add more water.


Harvesting

It is difficult to provide general guidelines for harvesting, since it is different with each 
vegetable. Before too long, you understand when it is time to harvest your vegetables, 
depending on what you are growing.

For example, broccoli is ready to harvest when the buds are still compact and before 
they open into flowers. With onions, you will harvest them when the tops are dying and 
fall over. Tomatoes should be fully colored when they are harvested.


Controlling Pests

Lastly, you want to control pests in a natural way, which is one of the most challenging 
parts of growing vegetables organically. You can either purchase an organic insecticide 
(which will be made with natural ingredients), or use some of these types of ingredients 
to make your own spray:

Vegetable oil and soap
Diatomaceous earth
Neem oil
Garlic

The type of pests you tend to get will determine which ingredients are best for an 
organic pesticide. 

