I am trying hard to find out how to grow vegetables. How do I prepare the soil, ie. lime? fertilizers? compost? What time of the year for what plants? Help please.
Colin
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If you live in the US, each state has an "agricultural extension service" whose purpose is to support people who are farming or gardening. They offer advice, literature, sometimes classes, and consultants. You can find their phone number in your phone book, via google, or by calling your public library and asking them.
Gardening feeds not just the body, but the soul! Good luck!
If you start early garden planting, you run the risk of too much of a rainy season unless you have the planting done in well drained earth. I would suggest buying good size tomato plants so you can have harvest earlier than planting a late garden.
Garden fertilizer and lime is sprinkled in the garden patch prior to planting seeds. Bush beans have no strings on them to remove as do some pole beans or runner green beans. Pole beans can be sown beside the corn and allow to vine up the stalks.
Do not plant all vining seeds/plants close to each other as they take over. What kinds of vegetables do you like? Start there and as far as sweet corn goes, Peaches and Cream, Silver Queen, Candy Corn are all tasty; depends on the size of cob you want as some grow smaller kernels than others.
Bell peppers are popular and easy to grow as are leaf lettuce, cabbage.
Zucchini and other squash, cucumbers and melons get planted in hills. Poke a hole in the hills made with your finger about 5-6 inches apart and place a couple seeds in each one and cover over.
Still need to dust vegetable plants with "Sevin" powder to keep garden bugs from eating your plants and veggies often and after every rain.
Do not plant indian corn near the sweet corn as they cross pollinate and get ruined.
If you want sweet potatoes or white potatoes cut a portion of the potato where you have at least 3 eyes in the cutting and plant them face down for roots to take hold. Plant the potatoes in a row and when the plants dye down, it's time you can dig them up being careful you don't cut into your new potatoes.
We don't plant carrots as underground bugs bother them too much, but you might have great success. Onions are ready to harvest when you see the top of the onion surfacing the ground and the top green is dying down.
Hope this bit helps you.
I would like to expand just a bit on Jilson's comment that every U.S. state has an "agricultural extension service" as our area also has a "county agricultural extension service" (in addition to the state service) which offers even more advice for a much smaller, more specific, area within our state. I don't know, however, if such a service is offered by every county in every state.
To find out if your state offers similar county by county services, as Jilson suggested, check the phone listings for your county offices or ask at a local public library.
Gardening is indeed a fulfilling hobby, (necessity for some) not to mention how incredibly wonderful food tastes when freshly harvested and prepared by your own hands! Good luck and happy eats!
I clicked the Find link on this website and found a post on starting a vegetable garden.
www.thriftyfun.com/
You can also get a farmer's almanac which will te3ll you the prime time to plant the vegies you want to grow (as well as other neat info).
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