The oldest profession in the world is farming. People have been doing it for thousands of years, and the profession itself allowed civilizations to spring to life. Through all those years, people have honed, even perfected, methods for cultivating the land and bringing plants to life.
For millions of people, gardening is just a hobby anymore, but it's still a useful hobby, providing food that is much cheaper than food bought at the grocery store. If you are willing to invest the time into learning how to practice vegetable gardening, then you can acquire one of the most rewarding hobbies in all of history.
From Seed to Food
There are so many different types of vegetable gardening around that it can be difficult to make a decision about which one you would like to pick up as your own. Do you want to practice indoor vegetable gardening? The French style is extremely popular, yielding more vegetables per area than any other. Of course, vegetable gardening encompasses many more types than can be listed here, each with their own distinct take on things.
Once you make important decisions concerning what types of plants you want to grow, the size of your garden that you are willing to maintain, and how long each type of plant will take to grow into fruition, you will be ready for preparation of the soil. This step of vegetable gardening is ultimately important to the growth of vegetation. By mixing in manure, compost, or other fertilizers into soil, you can give plants all of the nutrition that they need to grow large and healthy, producing some of the most amazingly delicious vegetables that you can imagine.
As your vegetables progress, you'll need to keep them watered. Expect to give them about an inch of water per week as they grow. Any less can produce dry rot in the plants, ruining them. Any more can make them rotten. Making sure that they receive the proper amount of water each week is perhaps more integral to vegetable gardening that soil preparation, but the first step shouldn't be neglected by any means.
If you decide to pick up indoor gardening, then consider building a greenhouse in your backyard to allow vegetables and other fruits to grow year round instead of in your home. A greenhouse allows the sun's natural rays to shine through so that you don't need to invest in specialized gardening lights, and it keeps your garden temperate all the time. There are many different ways to go about vegetable gardening. No method is inherently more effective, but they all give you great food at a fraction of the price of food bought from grocery stores.