Tips & Tools for Your First Vegetable Garden

Ready to start your first vegetable garden?
The three essentials for an easy vegetable garden are:
- Full sun (at least 6-8 hours)
- Convenient water supply
- Good soil
Add some basic supplies and you'll be off and growing.
X Marks the Vegetable Garden Spot
Ideally, prepare your garden bed in full sun (minimum of 6 hours of direct sunshine in the spring and summer). Just because a garden spot gets strong sun at noon it might not get 6 hours worth. Good soil is the source of nutrients for your plants. Now is the time for a soil test, to see if you need to amend your soil with key ingredients. For detailed information on soil testing, check out our video and article.It's All About the Soil


Watering & Weeding
Water your soil to boost the life activity of the compost you added, and to germinate the weeds. Hook up some drip irrigation and a timer to make your garden easy to maintain. Guess what? We have a video about drip irrigation too! When the young weeds sprout, cut them off quickly with any kind of hoe -- either a traditional hoe, a colinear hoe, or a stirrup hoe (also called a hula hoe for the back and forth motion in its jointed blade). A hand tool that is gaining fans all over the country is a Hori Hori blade for weeding and planting. Watch out! It's sharp!Deer Proof Gardening

Feed the Plants
After your vegetables are growing, give them a natural power drink with our Liquid Kelp and Liquid Fish solutions. The plants will absorb these best if you spray the liquids on their leaves. If you don't have a sprayer, you can pour them around the plants as a soil drench.Tool List for Your First Garden

Raised Beds and Containers

Organic Seeds for Your First Vegetable Garden
How to choose from the dazzling array of seeds to plant? My First Garden seed collection has our favorite easy to grow vegetables. The 10 resealable seed packets come in a sturdy tin, for secure storage. It makes a welcome gift, too, for a new gardener.
For more information for beginning gardeners, choose one of these reliable, classic gardening books: The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith or How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. If you're growing edibles in containers, you've got to have The Bountiful Container.
Watch our videos and read our blog articles for research-based organic gardening information on a range of topics.
Congratulations on starting your new garden! Let us know when you have questions throughout the year.