Growing your own vegetables puts fresh food on the table, reduces your impact on the climate and has a positive impact on your health. Would you like to get started, but don't know which vegetable garden plants to grow in your garden? Whether you have a small or large garden, want to vegetable garden in full soil or planters and garden every day or only sporadically. Discover our tips for choosing vegetable garden plants for your garden.
Kitchen garden plants: four seasons of home-grown pleasure
Many think you only reap the benefits of your vegetable garden in summer, but nothing could be further from the truth. If you plant your vegetable garden properly, you will enjoy home-grown produce throughout the four seasons. serre is especially handy. Because you create a microclimate, the plants in the greenhouse are less susceptible to weather conditions and cold. You extend the growing season, as it were: in spring you start sowing earlier and in autumn you enjoy your harvest even longer.
Be sure to make a sowing calendar and a planting calendar for the vegetables in your greenhouse and open-air garden. This way, you always have an overview of what to sow and plant, but you can also organize your vegetable garden plants so that you have a year-round harvest.
Tip! On your planting calendar, include not only vegetables, but also fruit, herbs and even flowers.
Kitchen garden plants for beginners
Are you just starting to plant vegetables? Then start small. It is better to slowly discover which vegetable plants fit into your garden than to be overwhelmed by all the work straight away. Because yes: setting up a vegetable garden requires a lot of time and dedication. Good kitchen garden plants for beginners are carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach, rocket and zucchini.
Also read: gardening for beginners. Everything you need to know to start your own (vegetable) garden.
Good vegetable garden plants for a planter
If you have a small garden or just a terrace, you can choose to . In principle, you can grow almost all vegetable garden plants in containers, but bear in mind that they require more water and nutrition. This is because plants in containers have less space to grow and no direct contact with the moisture- and nutrient-rich natural soil.
Good options for a vegetable garden in planters are:
- Beans
- Peas
- Corn (be sure to secure it with a tension wire or bamboo cane)
- Eggplant
- Sweet potato
- Beetroot
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Herbs
Kitchen garden plants in the shade
Don't have much sun in your garden? Growing zucchini and tomatoes is then not an option, but there are other vegetable garden plants that love the shade. Leafy vegetables in particular, which contain a lot of water that would evaporate in full sun, are real shade lovers. Think leaf lettuce, spinach, purslane, rocket, endive and pak choi. Vegetables that grow (partly) underground do not need much sun either: carrot, onion, spring onion, garlic, radish, beetroot and potato.
Combination growing and crop rotation
For your vegetable garden plants, consider combination growing. This is because certain crops are good or bad neighbors to each other. For example, tomatoes and basil make a top team in the vegetable garden and the successful trio of pumpkin, maize and climbing beans is sometimes called ‘the three sisters’. This is because the beans can climb on stalks of the maize and the pumpkins as ground cover keep the soil cool and moist. Radish and cucumber, on the other hand, are not such good neighbors, as are parsley and lettuce. It is also best not to plant carrots and tomatoes too close together.
Besides combined cultivation, make sure to vary your vegetable garden plants. Don't plant the same thing in the same spot every year, but if possible, alternate crops between different crops to keep your soil healthy and prevent possible pests.
Self-sow or buy vegetable garden plants?
Will you sow your own or buy raised vegetable plants from a shop or online? Sowing your own vegetable plants is cheaper, but of course requires more work and patience. You can pre-sow many crops in the greenhouse as early as mid-February, but it is best to take them inside at night to protect them from frost. Young seedlings are also more sensitive than vegetable plants for the kitchen garden that you buy online or in shops. Therefore, before you plant them out, harden them off or let them get used to the outdoor climate.
Want to buy vegetable garden plants (online) in Belgium? Then be sure to take a look at the ACD® partners. There you will undoubtedly find a garden center near you that not only sells vegetable garden plants, but where you can also admire ACD® greenhouses.
What can I plant in my vegetable garden now?
Want to get your hands dirty, but don't know what to plant in your vegetable garden right now? Check out a month-by-month overview for information on what you can plant and sow now in the greenhouse or outdoors.
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