10 Tips for a Successful Vegetable Garden - Urban Programs Travis County (2024)

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What are the best tips for vegetable gardening? ›

Top tips for a successful vegetable garden

Full sun is best. Prepare your soil well before you plant. Thoroughly remove all weeds, dig to loosen the soil, and amend with compost and fertilizer as needed. Choose vegetables that your family likes to eat.

Tips for starting an urban garden

Find a place where the plant has access to at least 6-8 hours of sunlight a day. Plants can be grown on the roof (with permission of course). They can also be grown in window boxes, patios, as well as on balconies in hanging baskets. Soil depth is key.

Chard, lettuce, cherry and bush tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, summer squash, Asian greens, and bush beans are all excellent options for a container garden, depending on the size of your container. And don't forget herbs—basil, chives, thyme and more.

As in real estate, the three most important factors to success in vegetable gardening are location, location, and location. You want a location with abundant sunshine, good drainage, away from shrubs and trees and their competing roots, and close to an irrigation source.

As a general rule, put tall veggies toward the back of the bed, mid-sized ones in the middle, and smaller plants in the front or as a border. Consider adding pollinator plants to attract beneficial insects that can not only help you get a better harvest, but will also prey on garden pests.

Urban agriculture can include community gardens; larger scale urban farms or orchards; growing vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices for market; raising chickens or livestock and keeping bees. It also may include growing flowers and non-food crops for landscaping and other uses.

By producing food on unused land in cities, urban agriculture can reduce the amount of land needed for rural agriculture. When agriculture takes advantage of unused space in cities, it can directly reduce carbon emissions since foods grown in or near cities travel shorter distances.

Home and community gardeners typically grow food for their own consumption, donation, or limited nonprofit sales. Community gardens typically engage a number of stakeholders. Urban farms operate on a larger scale than community gardens, grow produce for sale, and often require a business license to operate.

What are 5 things you should do to prepare a good veggie garden? ›

The ideal garden area gets full or nearly full sunlight and has deep, well-drained, fertile soil. The garden should be near a water outlet but not close to competing shrubs or trees. However, if you modify certain cultural practices and select the right crops, almost any site can become a highly productive garden.

How to Prep Soil for a Garden: Rich and Crumbly. You can grow some crops in clay and some in sand. But most grow best in rich, crumbly loam soil teeming with life, like earthworms and microbes. Amending the soil with compost and other soil builders like shredded leaves will gradually build up a productive soil.