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Dig Into Vegetable Gardening If you’re thinking of starting to grow veggies for the first time – or even if you’ve been doing it for years – these somewhat-random veggie-gardening observations may prove helpful. by Tom Watson One way to really make a house a home is to grow your own food. I've been doing it for more than 20 years, and there are few things that are more satisfying. If you're thinking of starting to grow veggies for the first time – or even if you've been doing it for years – these somewhat-random veggie-gardening observations (based on my own dirt-digging experiences) may prove helpful.

- Will all those folks who start veggie gardens for the first time this spring – because of Michelle Obama's White House garden, or to try to save money in these tough economic times – lose interest in July, and then their crops will just dry up or rot on the vine? I'm afraid I've seen it happen all too often. Maybe the First Lady should do a publicity blitz in mid-summer to remind people to keep watering and maintaining their gardens.

- Arugula – one of my family's favorite salad greens, and apparently a fave of Barack Obama as well (it's in the White House garden) – is ridiculously easy to grow from seed.

- I love sugar snap peas, and used to grow them every spring. They're great because here in Seattle you can plant them in late February, harvest them in June and then plant something else (like tomatoes or basil) in that spot. But I got disenchanted with growing peas because even though I always got the "bush" kind, I still had to spend tons of time staking them and keeping them tied up. I decided they just took too much time and effort to grow for the yield we got, so I don't grow them anymore.

- Working in garden stores in the Midwest when I was young, I learned you should plant tomato starts very deep – you can even bury the first side branch. I still do this, and I've always had success. It apparently gives them a really strong root system.

- In a raised bed in the parking strip in front of our house (the sunniest area), I grow my veggies in pure compost. Every year I add three or four inches of compost from my backyard compost bin. They love it. You wouldn't necessarily want to grow perennials or shrubs in pure compost, but for vegetables it works great.

- Tilling the crap out of your vegetable garden before you plant it up, which is the traditional approach, is not really necessary, according to the latest horticultural wisdom I've heard.

- It seems like zucchini is a lot harder to grow than it used to be. There must be some kind of disease that's rotting them on the vine. I've seen it here, and at my Mom's garden in Ohio.

- The crop I grow that is probably the most useful is basil, because we use it to make pesto every September, and then freeze the pesto and use it for months. And it saves us money, although probably not lots of money, since I use basil starts and they can be expensive (I tried to grow basil by seed once but failed).

- Mint sounds like a good idea – and it's great for mojitos, if you like mixed drinks – but the kind I have in my raised bed has turned into a weed. It tries to take over the whole garden with underground runners, and it's a pain in the butt.

- Like lots of other things in life, vegetable gardening has been made easier by the Internet. No, it can't plant or water or harvest – you're on your own there. But you can find gardening supplies or the solution to practically any gardening problem, with just a click or two. So take advantage of the collected knowledge of all those other gardeners online, and make this the year you dig into veggie gardening.

Note: Tom adapted and updated this article from an entry in his EcoConsumer blog.


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