When Should You Fertilize Your Vegetable Garden?

garden

Grow your own food with style! Use these tips to create a vegetable garden design that's as beautiful as it is productive.

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Make It Pretty

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Pick the Right Spot

Alicia Evans Garden

The key to success with your vegetable garden design is to make sure you have the right spot. Most vegetables do best with full sun—at least eight hours of direct light a day. No matter what kind of soil you have, your vegetables will thank you if you amend the ground with organic matter (such as compost) before planting.

Here's a hint: Site your garden where you can get to it easily. Harvesting fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs is easier if you can quickly dash out and grab what you need (especially while you're cooking) instead of having to trek across the yard.

Save money (and the environment) by making your own compost -- click here for more information

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Make an Entrance

Side Yard

One easy way to dress up a garden of any sort is to give it a grand entrance. Here, a simple white arbor bedecked with climbing roses does the trick. While climbing roses are a classic pick for growing on an arbor, you can grow anything -- from ornamental clematis or morning glories to edible scarlet runner beans or kiwi -- in your vegetable garden design.

Click here to see other arbor ideas

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Just Add Flowers

dianthus spiked punch flower

One trick to make your vegetable garden design look more attractive is to mix flowers in with your vegetables. Here, Gaillardia 'Oranges and Lemons' adds a bright splash of color. Flowers, especially those in the daisy family, attract beneficial insects. Many of these beneficial bugs attack and kill pests such as tomato hornworms or aphids. Other beneficial bugs pollinate fruit-bearing vegetables, such as tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, squash, and melons so you have bigger harvests.

Here's a hint: Pick plants with edible flowers so they can do double duty. Add them to salads or desserts and let them attract beneficial insects.

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Protect Your Plants

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If hungry deer, rabbits, or other critters visit your garden, protect your plants (as here, with a simple 3-foot-tall fence) so the pests don't harvest more than you do. Chicken wire attached around the fence's perimeter keeps small animals out of your vegetable garden design.

Here's a hint: If rabbits, gophers, or other burrowing animals are a problem, your wire fencing will need to extend at least a foot below the ground to keep critters from digging under it.

Click here for more tips on dealing with pests in the garden

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Grow Up with Raised Beds

watering vegetables in raised garden bed

Raised beds offer many benefits for vegetable garden design. You can fill them with any type of soil you want (an advantage if your ground is full of clay, sand, or rocks). Raised beds also warm earlier in the spring so you can get a jump on the planting season. And, if you build them 3 to 4 feet wide—so you can easily reach the middle from both sides—you'll never compact the soil by stepping on it.

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Think Like a Designer

landscaping

Take advantage of garden-design secrets in your vegetable garden design. Here's a great example of the power of repetition: Bright red poppies echo the round fruits of tomatoes. The climbing rose on the arbor is similar to the orange gaillardias and nasturtiums in the far corner.

Click here for other garden-design tips

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Grow in Containers

tubs with green and dark red lettuces

Add containers of edible plants to your vegetable garden design—or to decks and patios—to expand your space. Ever-bearing strawberries, for example, do well in pots or hanging baskets. The red fruits look decorative hanging over the edges, and are easier to harvest.

Here's a hint: Colorful containers are another way to add a splash of interest to the garden.

Click here for tips for growing your own strawberries

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Make Sure You Mulch

Mulching Vegetable Pepper Plant

Make maintaining your vegetable garden design easier with a layer of mulch. An inch or two of mulch helps your soil hold moisture during hot, dry weather. It also stops most weeds from sprouting. Plus, mulch keeps many soil-borne diseases from splashing up onto plant leaves and infecting them.

Here's a hint: Spread mulch over your pathways so you won't get muddy feet when you're in the garden.

Click here for tips for more about mulch

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Pick Pretty Varieties

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Flowers aren't the only way to add color to your vegetable garden design—a number of vegetables can, too. For example, the Swiss chard shown here adds a bright note to the bed. Other attractive vegetables include eggplant, red cabbage, purple kohlrabi, and red-leaf lettuce. Different tomatoes and peppers bear fruits in shades of red, orange, yellow, cream, purple, and green. And many herbs offer good looks, including thyme, chives, and parsley.

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Bring On the Birds

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Natural gardeners know the value of attracting birds to a vegetable garden design. Many common birds, including robins, mockingbirds, wrens, and warblers eat harmful insects. Include a source of water in your garden to attract your feathered friends. Here, a simple birdbath set among herbs does the trick.

Here's a hint: Birds will appreciate a source of shelter nearby, so if you can, plant a shrub or small tree near your garden.

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Add Ornamentation

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Use garden ornaments—from birdhouses to statuary—to embellish your vegetable garden design. Anything goes, as long as it suits your personal style. This blue birdhouse does double duty: It looks good and provides a spot for birds to live.

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