Making the Home Garden a Producing Garden

There are dozens of reasons for making a garden.  Whether it’s for the visual beauty of the plants, the experience of working outdoors in the soil, or for yielding consumable food, they all require work and planning.  And it does not matter whether the effects desired are artistic or practical, every garden has a way of yielding many gifts.  It makes good sense, however, to make a garden that really produces food that the family can consume.  People who have experimented with growing their own food inevitably find that there’s a remarkable tastiness to fresh plants, and may decide to take it a step or two further.

There are some who decide to try to make their produce sellable in the local markets.  With a small investment, either from digging into the personal accounts, or from a lender like Money Mutual , one can make a remarkable spread with just a little land.  It does take some patience, however.  One of the most popular methods for people living in small spaces is known as French Intensive Gardening.  Similar to permaculture, or biodynamic gardening, it is a process of preparing the earth that makes it ready to yield more than it might offer without a few modifications.

One needs an area about five feet by five feet.  The soil should be fairly amenable to planting, not too sandy, and not too compact.  A layer of manure is added by removing the soil in rows, filling in with manure, and then covering over with the soil, so that they are mixed together.  This creates a kind of a raised bed, and the double layer of good growing materials keeps the root systems loose.  Care needs to be taken so that one can move in between the rows, in order to move through the garden during all the stages of growth.  There is less watering that’s necessary, but it does take more attention, and it may take more than one planting season to get used to how this particular patch of ground works with the seeds.

It is similar, too, to Square Foot Gardening, and interestingly enough, both techniques came into fruition in the 70s (although their roots are much older).  These methods of making the most of small areas do tend to cycle in popularity.  There are more people interested in growing their own food now than in recent years, and while not everyone will consider Montel Williams for a possible source of seed money, the effort is worth the time and trouble.  One taste of a meal that’s grown entirely from one’s own hands, and the greatest appeal for gardening becomes very obvious very quickly.