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How to Guide: Grow Your Own Fruits and Vegetables
There is nothing greater than a fresh picked lettuce, tomato, and cucumber salad on a warm day in hot summer. You cannot compete with a fresh picked apple from your back yard to quench your thirst before lunch time. Growing your own edible garden oasis is the hot new trend for 2009!
We provide a large selection of fruits and vegetables; from apples and blueberries to cucumbers and red peppers. Fertilizer, disease, and insect controls are also available in both synthetic and organic form for your convenience. We have staff ready to assist you in tackling a garden and we will be happy to walk you through the ins and outs of starting a garden.
Raised garden accessories are excellent for small patios, decks, condos and apartments, anywhere you'd like to grow vegetables, herbs, or flowers. The Elevated Garden Bed eliminates bending over while gardening and is perfect for gardeners with mobility and back strain issues.
Starting a vegetable garden is moderately easy and can be accomplished with a little elbow grease and following these few steps: |
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Location
- Find a flat area in your yard that gets full sun relatively all day.
- Begin breaking up and turning the soil
- Incorporating compost (a combination of broken down leaves, grass clippings, and table scraps)
Spacing
- Figure out how much growing space you have and plant accordingly.
- For example, lettuce can be grown as close as 4-5 inches
- Tomatoes need at least 2 feet from each other.
- Staking: We sell many different sized garden stakes
- Pumpkins and squash plants need almost 4 feet!
- Growing requirements and spacing are located on the back of the seed packets
Selection
 Choose vegetables that require less room if you have a small garden or grow them in a container.- Lettuce is great for a pot
- “Patio” tomatoes work well in hanging baskets
- Tomato planter
This upside-down planter is intended to provide a simple, fast way to grow tomatoes and other vegetables. Gravity pulls water and nutrients directly from the roots to the fruit, yielding up to 30 pounds of ripe tomatoes per plant. It sets up in three steps and requires no digging, weeding or bending. It measures 17x91/2 inches and weighs less than 2 pounds. Click here to learn more.
- Plants that climb like cucumbers and beans can be trained to grow on a trellis taking up more vertical room
- Use herbs and parsley in your flower beds to incorporate tantalizing aromas and also to help free up space in your garden
Scheduling
- Planting times should be around the main temperature driven seasons: cool season (spring and fall) and warm season (summer)
- Some cool season vegetables:
- Some warm season vegetables:
Maintenance
- Weed regularly to prevent competition of nutrients with your vegetables
- Use a hoe or hand trowel to help with those difficult weeds
- Water 2-3 times weekly and deeply
- Some leafy vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, and lettuce require more water and should be watered 3 times a week in the hot summer
 Fertilizing
Have your soil tested or come into the nursery to buy a soil test kit.
If your soil’s pH is 5.8 or lower, this means it is acidic
If your soil’s pH is 7.2 or higher, this means it is alkaline
- Add Espoma’s Iron Sulfate or Hoffman’s Aluminum sulfate to lower the pH
- Add Espoma Iron Sulfate, Hoffman’s aluminum sulfate, Lime right’s pulverized lime and Fafard’s dehydrated or composted manure to the soil in the fall
- Let the nutrients soak into the soil throughout the winter months
- Apply fertilizer in the spring as soon as the ground is workable
Use a fertilizer like Espoma’s 5-10-5 or 10-10-10 to incorporate the nutrients your garden will need for the growing season.
Printable Fact Sheet
UMASS has provided Northeast Nursery with downloadable fact sheets for common garden concerns and tips. Planning a Vegetable Garden | Planting a Vegetable Garden
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