Even if you don't have enough space for a large vegetable garden, you don't have to go without crunchy, home-grown vegetables. Spring is the ideal time to plant a new vegetable patch, which can be integrated into almost any green space.
Vegetables are only planted out after the ice saints
Planning a vegetable patch
Even before you create the bed, you should consider how much space you can spare and how much area you want to cultivate. If you don't overdo it at first, then the joy of gardening won't turn into tiresome work.
A bed width of 80 centimeters to a maximum of 1.20 meters has proven itself. In this way you can easily reach the middle of the bed and do not have to step on it to weed and harvest. Several small, subdivided areas have the advantage that planning the mixed culture and crop rotation becomes easier.
Planting the vegetable patch
Draw a cultivation plan, this will make it much easier to lay out the vegetable patch later.
Prepare bed
- Tension a string board at the point where you want to create the vegetable patch.
- Cut out the lawn within the bed area.
- Very practical are bed borders made of wooden boards, which you can easily make yourself. They prevent the lawn from growing back into the bed and make the work noticeably easier.
The soil preparation
Vegetable plants love well-aerated substrates with high water storage capacity. Therefore, dig up the earth at least a spade deep. Sandy soils are improved with some compost. Clay topsoil is given a crumbly structure by adding sand and compost.
Fertilize
In order to optimally supply the soil with nutrients, you can also work in a biological fertilizer.
The Sowing
Now smooth the substrate carefully. Depending on the type of vegetable plants, they can be sown directly into the bed after the ice saints. Cultivation in a cold frame or indoors is recommended for frost-sensitive varieties.
Very practical for beginners are seed tapes that are simply placed in previously made grooves, lightly covered with soil and watered.
tips
A soil analysis always makes sense for a new system. If the soil is depleted, the vegetables will thrive and yield little. Through the soil analysis, you know exactly which nutrients are missing and can apply biological fertilizers in a targeted manner.