Organic Gardening:

Growing Vegetable Plants Becomes More Than Just A Hobby

by Ann Marier

Ever since I was young, growing vegetables from seeds has been one of my favorite hobbies. I would love to help my mom growing vegetables on Sundays, and stroll around them with my dad on weekday afternoons. I love the smell of a growing vegetable, the feel of its skin as it ripens, and the way its vines entwine. Most of all, however, I love the taste of a homegrown vegetable for my dinner. Though it is not difficult to have a great garden, there are some things that you have to do and watch out for.

Some of these things can be very unexpected. My husband is the last person I would have thought would dream of a growing vegetable plants, but he surprises me all of the time. We lived in the city the first time he tried it. We had a nice backyard with trees and plenty of grass. He planted a few small items. I think he was growing vegetable plants that are pretty common. There were some cucumber plants, some tomatoes, and a few pumpkin plants. There was not a lot of space, but he didn't care, he just wanted to grow something.

Of course, vegetable garden planting is not all eating and enjoying the fruits of your labor. There is plenty to do in the meantime. Each growing vegetable needs to be carefully tended to, and some of them can be very temperamental! If you are growing vegetables outside, you need to watch out for bugs, slugs, and other pests. There are even diseases that can get some of your vegetables if you are unlucky.

Because we were in the city, we thought of things like weeding and watering, and we did our best to keep it fertilized. However, we never thought in our wildest dreams that deer would come and eat everything. They wiped out his garden in one night. Apparently there was a small deer population that lived in the small woods near our home, even though we were near the highway and several very busy roads. I think they struck many yards that were growing vegetable gardens, as I heard another neighbor saying that he would have to buy some fence for his garden the next year.

If you want to start growing vegetables, make sure you know what you are up against. Veggies are rather easy to grow as long as you put some time into keeping the garden going. Of course, a growing vegetable garden needs to have a diverse crop. Not only should you plant a variety of different species, but you should also plans different strains of the same species. For example, if you are growing tomatoes, you should get a variety pack so that you can find out which ones you like the best.

Vegetable growing can be a very relaxing hobby, and many find that once they start with a small garden of vegetables, they end up wanting to do more each year.

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