Vegetable Gardening
Welcome to our vegetable gardening site. Here you will find information about growing and planting different vegetables.
Gardening and Farming
Vegetables, fruits, herbs, shade trees, shrubs, grasseses, herbaceous perennialss and flowers are all grown in gardens— sometimes they are grown together in the same garden, but not always.
Fruit and nut trees are more commonly considered to form an orchard, though they are sometimes an adjunct to a garden.
When a variety of plant types are grown together with native species, the combination is sometimes called a wild garden. These are embedded in some pre-existing natural ecology that is not damaged but rather enhanced by the process of cultivation. As in other forms of gardening, aesthetics plays a central role in deciding what is 'right', but constraints apply. Wild gardens are by definition examples of water-wise gardening, as the natural species of any ecoregion or micro-climate are those optimal for local water supplies.
In respect to its food producing purpose, gardening is distinguished from farming chiefly by scale and intent. Farming occurs on a larger scale, and with the production of saleable goods as a major motivation. Gardening is done on a smaller scale, primarily for pleasure and to produce goods for the gardener's own family or community. There is some overlap between the terms, particularly in that some moderate sized vegetable growing concerns can fit in either category.
The key distinction between fruit and vegetable gardening and farming is essentially one of scale: gardening can be a hobby or an income supplement, but farming is generally understood as a full-time or commercial activity, usually involving more land and quite different practices. The key distinction is that gardening is labor-intensive and employs very little infrastructural capital, typically no more than a few tools, e.g. a spade, hoe, basket and watering can. By contrast, larger-scale farming often involves irrigation systems, chemical fertilizers and harvesters or at least ladders, e.g. to reach up into fruit trees.
In part because of labor intensivity and aesthetic motivations, gardening is very often much more productive per unit of land than farming. In the Soviet Union, half the food supply came from small peasants' garden plots on the huge government-run collective farms, although they were tiny patches of land. Some argue this as evidence of superiority of capitalism, since the peasants were generally able to sell their produce. Others consider it to be evidence of a tragedy of the commons, since the large collective plots were often neglected, or fertilizers or water redirected to the private gardens.
The term precision agriculture is sometimes used to describe such economically viable forms of gardening using intermediate technology (more than tools, less than harvesters), especially of organic varieties. Gardening is effectively scaled up to feed entire villages of over 100 people from specialized plots. A variant is the community garden which offers plots to urban dwellers. See also allotment (gardening).
In China, for instance, farmers regularly set up outhouses on the roads to attract tourists to use them, furnishing the farmers with "night soil" (biosolids) and food for pigs, who are fed primarily on human sewage. These methods make excellent use of calories and minerals and water, but of course violate the aesthetics of most Westerners, who would balk at using stranger's human wastes on their own gardens or feeding them to domestic animals. There is thus some conflict between gardening for personal or aesthetic reasons, and for practical food-raising, even for one household.
The living wall is an unusual variant of a living machine and is effectively a vertical garden: water dripping down feeds a surface growing with moss and vines, other plants, some insects and bacteria, and captured at the bottom in a pool or pond to be recirculated to the top. One is sometimes built indoors to help cure sick building syndrome or otherwise increase the oxygen levels in recirculated air.
Organic Vegetable Gardening For Beginners
Organic vegetable gardens are becoming extremely popular in the gardening world. To do it properly here are some tips and techniques to follow for a healthy and abundant organic vegetable garden.
Indoor Container Vegetable Gardening Ideas
If you are an apartment dweller, look to your patio and balcony to provide the perfect place to start your indoor container vegetable garden. Herbs can be grown indoors easily as well. An added benefit to indoor container vegetable gardening is you can do this all year round!
Veganic gardening
Veganic gardening (or vegetal organic gardening) is a system of vegan organic gardening developed by Rosa Dalziell O'Brien and May E Bruce, although the term was originally coined by Geoffrey Rudd.
Vegetables