How to plant and care for a vegetable garden: Dan Gill explains

Last week, I provided you with basic information on getting a vegetable garden started, including site selection and preparing the soil for planting. This week, we will move on to planting and maintaining the garden.

We plant vegetables most commonly either by using seeds or transplants. Which we choose depends largely on the vegetable. There is a strong trend these days for gardeners to pick up transplants of whatever vegetables they want to grow. But many popular vegetables are easily grown from seeds planted directly into the garden where they will grow — notably the legume vegetables and cucurbits.

Seeds

Legume vegetables for planting during the warm season include snap beans (green, purple, yellow and filet), Romano beans (large, flat pods), dry shelling beans (red beans, pinto beans, black beans), lima beans, butter beans, edamame (edible soybeans), Southern peas (black-eyed peas, crowders, cream peas) and yardlong beans.

The seeds of these vegetables are large, germinate quickly and are easy to plant directly into the garden where they will grow. There are bush types and vining types in this group of vegetables. Vining types will need to be planted next to trellises for them to climb on.

The cucurbits include cucumbers, squash (summer and winter squash are both grown during the warm season), pumpkins, gourds (cucuzza and luffa both produce edible fruit), cantaloupes, melons and watermelons. Gourds and cucumbers are grown on trellises.

Other warm-season vegetables generally planted by direct seeding include okra and corn.

Transplants

Vegetables that are best planted from transplants this time of the year include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, mirliton (plant entire, sprouted fruit), Swiss chard and most herbs.

Learn how to space them

When planting any vegetables, either from seeds or transplants, proper spacing is critical. Gardeners often don’t appreciate how large vegetable plants will grow to be when planting young transplants or seeing the small seedlings that grow from seeds planted directly in the garden. There is also the idea that the more plants you grow in an area the more harvest you will get.

But vegetables spaced too close together compete with one another, and this actually reduces production. And crowded vegetables are likely to have more insect and disease problems. Check the labels of transplants and the packets that seeds come in for proper spacing recommendations or look them up online and make sure you space your vegetables properly.

Be sure to mulch

Mulch is a material applied to cover the soil surface, and you should always mulch your vegetable beds. We most often use organic mulches, such as leaves, dried grass clippings, pine straw and newspaper, in home gardens.

Organic mulches help prevent weeds, keep the soil from packing down, moderate soil temperature and conserve moisture. They can also help prevent some diseases, such as buckeye rot of tomatoes. When direct seeding, do not cover the newly seeded area of the bed with mulch until the seeds come up and have grown to be several inches tall.

As soon as you have planted transplants, apply an inch or two of leaves, grass clippings or pine straw. If transplants are small, pull the mulch slightly away from the transplants until they have grown larger.

Watering the right way

Proper watering is a critical part of home vegetable gardening. Newly seeded beds and newly planted transplants will require careful monitoring and frequent watering until the vegetable plants are well-established and growing. After that, it is a matter of watching the weather (temperature and amount of rainfall), checking the soil (to see how damp or dry it is) and looking at the vegetables (slight wilting generally indicates a need to water).

It is better to water thoroughly and deeply, occasionally rather than lightly, frequently. Vegetables in beds are generally best watered slowly over time with sprinklers, soaker hoses or drip irrigation rather than by hand. For vegetables in containers, watering by hand is fine — apply water until it runs out of the drainage holes.

To minimize disease problems, water your vegetables in a way that avoids wetting the foliage, such as drip irrigation or soaker hoses.

Weeds be gone

One of the challenges of growing vegetables is keeping the garden weeded through the intense heat of summer. Even with mulches, weeds will still need to be dealt with. Physical control by hand pulling or hoeing is the typical method.

Make a commitment from the very beginning to deal with weeds frequently — every few days as needed. Once weeds are allowed to get out of hand, it’s tremendously difficult to get things back under control.

Controlling the myriad insect and disease problems that affect vegetables is far too large a topic for here. But rest assured that you will have to deal with them if you grow vegetables. When symptoms first appear, you must properly diagnose the problem and choose the best and safest method of control. Contact your parish LSU AgCenter Extension office for help . Prompt action when pest problems arise is almost always critical.

The harvest

Finally, the reward for all your money, time and hard work is the harvest of fresh, quality vegetables you get from your garden. Make sure you are aware of how to properly harvest the vegetables you choose to grow. Allowing vegetables to go past their prime and lose quality is a real pity after all the work.

Successfully growing vegetables is not a matter of just buying a few plants, sticking them in the ground, sitting back and waiting for the harvest. It takes learning how to properly grow vegetables here, time, effort and plenty of sweat. But if you are willing to do it, the joy and satisfaction of providing fresh, home-grown vegetables to your family table and sharing them with friends is worth every bit of effort it takes.