It might be you live in the city but have always had green fingers. Maybe you have a little patch of earth in your backyard that you want to make into a productive garden. You may also even have read an article or two about organic veg and want to try growing them yourself.

No matter the reasons why for growing your own vegetables, you’re at the stage where you are preparing to jump into growing in some way. Before you can do so, there are a number of things to consider that you ought to keep in mind to ensure that your experience is enjoyable and rewarding.

The first, and possibly most straightforward, subject that you should consider is what type of garden do you want to have? Still writing strictly about veg gardens, there are a number of kinds of them depending on the space you have available plus your lifestyle.

Maybe you are interested just in herbs or smaller plants? They can easily be held in a container garden using flower pots. Plus container gardens have the extra benefit of being able to be brought into the house when the weather gets too chilly outdoors. There’s no need even for transplanting!

If you are contemplating more of a ‘regular’ style of garden, the ground will have to be prepared and reguraly hoed before you could plant. The ground will need to be analyzed as well to create the best marriage of soil type to what’s being grown. With a big enough garden, there is the potential of harvesting enough fresh vegetables to eat throughout the growing season and store/pickle/can what’s left for the off-season.

Finally, an improvement to the idea of the ‘regular’ garden is a raised garden. At its most basic, raised garden beds resemble sandboxes with vegetables growing out of them. These enclosures have a great number of benefits over ‘regular’ bed gardening. The soil itself warms more rapidly at the start of the growing season and the construction of the enclosure itself helps with drainage. There is also the added return of not having to bend over or stoop quite as much when working in your garden, which anyone with lower back pain can easily identify with.

After research into the type of garden, the second question to ask yourself is why. Why do you want to get into growing plants? Is it for one of the reasons that has been mentioned at the beginning of the article, or possibly another more personal one.

Gardens can provide a huge selection of fruits and vegetables that are unique to individual tastes. Should you love pumpkins, for example, turn part of your back yard into a pumpkin patch. And honestly, the texture and flavour of freshly grown produce picked at almost the instant that they ripen can’t be surpassed.

Once bitten by the gardening bug - no pun intended - you will probably find that you lean towards organic gardening to produce veggies that are free from pesticides. Or you might find that your garden soil is particularly suited for one kind of vegetation or another; for example, blueberries tend to thrive in soil that has an acid pH level.

When you make the choice that this is a hobby that you’d like to pursue, the possibilities are almost endless, subject only to your creative thinking. Each year provides a new blank slate of options that you can work with. If something doesn’t work particularly effectively, don’t do it again next year. If you enjoy something and you don’t mind the extra work involved with care and upkeep, you can plant double.

The choice is up to you.

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