Vegetable Farming & Gardening
Vegetables can be grown in small scale at home gardens or in large scale at your farm. This article will cover both.
Firstly, vegetable farming is defined as growing of vegetables for human consumption. On the other hand, gardening vegetables involve growing of vegetables in low scale in your home gardens, for home use of small scale business.
A successful vegetable garden requires a good site, careful planning, good management and considerable hard work. Similarly, if you want to cultivate vegetables in large scale for human consumption, you need to select a good site, whose soils favour vegetable growing. Apart from this, you will require similar management skills at your vegetable farms.
Basic Techniques
Site selection
For you to get high vegetable yields, it begins with selecting a good site which favours vegetable cultivation. That's a good vegetable garden and farm site, is essential for high vegetable yields. Poor sites not only produce low vegetable yields, but may also be extremely difficult to grow your vegetables.
You should select a site with deep, medium-textured, well-drained, nearly level soil as it favours vegetable growing. Fine-textured, clay soils stay wet late into the spring, are difficult to work and tend to crust badly. Sandy soils dry out very quickly and require frequent nutrient applications, this makes them unsuitable vegetable cultivation.
If you have resorted to grow your vegetables in your home gardens, you should know that most vegetable gardens require six hours of sunlight or more per day to produce well. The more the garden is shaded, the slower the vegetables will grow and the lower their yields will be.
Trees and large shrubs not only shade gardens, but also use nutrients and water needed for proper vegetable growth, which is not the case in your vegetable farms, which favours large scale production.
You should select a vegetable site for your home gardens near your house to make it more convenient to care for the garden and to harvest your vegetables. Water should be available for transplanting and irrigation.
Soil preparation
Having selected a good site to establish your vegetable farm or garden, the next step is to prepare your site or soil. In preparing the land for your vegetable production, the following factors should be taken into consideration: ecological location, mode of cropping, season, crop disposition, and the type of vegetables to be grown.
The selected vegetable site should be prepared by removing old plant supports, plastic mulches, excessive vegetative residues and other debris from the garden area or your vegetable farm several weeks before planting to allow the soil to dry out.
Soil in your vegetable farm and Garden should not be worked when it is too wet. You should pick up a handful of soil and roll it into a ball. If the soil sticks together and does not crumble when dropped, it is too wet to work. Soil worked too wet forms large, hard clods which are difficult to break up and are completely unsuitable for a seedbed.
Soil in your vegetable farm and garden should be worked to a depth of at least 6 or 7 inches and smoothed before planting. Seed should be planted only in moist, finely aggregated soil.
Soils worked into a powdery condition are more likely to crust. Small vegetable seeds planted in cloddy soil usually dries out and germinate poorly. Garden and farm soil may be worked with farm equipment, a rototiller or spaded with a shovel.
Fertilizer and Lime
Vegetable farm and gardens will not reach their potential unless the soil is properly limed and fertilized. Liming in your vegetable farm or garden decreases soil acidity, increases fertilizer availability and reduces certain physiological problems such as blossom-end-rot of tomatoes, peppers and watermelons. A soil test is the only reliable method of determining the optimum amount of lime and fertilizer to apply in your farm or garden.
You should apply fertilizer to your farm or garden soil in the spring before planting. Manure is generally broadcast. Chemical fertilizers should be broadcast, applied in the rows or banded near or under the rows. If fertilizer is broadcast or applied in the rows in your vegetable farm or garden, it should be worked into the soil before planting.
Seeding and Spacing
Proper spacing among rows and between vegetable plants within rows is essential for maximum production of high-quality vegetables. Planting your vegetable on ridges in your farm or garden will ensure good stands of cool-season vegetables and make it easier to plant at the proper time.
Ridges promote germination early in the spring because they warm up and dry out quickly. Ridges in your vegetable farm also reduce the chance of spring vegetables being flooded during heavy rains.
As a general rule, vegetable seeds should be planted at a depth equal to 2 to 4 times their diameter. You should plant your vegetables shallowly early in the spring when the soil is wet and cold and a little deeper in the summer when soils are drier. You should plant shallowly in heavy clay soils and a little deeper in light sandy soils.
Transplants
Some vegetables are easier to grow from transplants than from seed. Beginning with vegetable transplants rather than seed will speed vegetable maturity in your farm or vegetable garden.
Other vegetables, such as sweet potatoes or Irish potatoes, may not be commonly grown from true seed. Thus, gardens will likely contain vegetables grown from transplants, slips or seed pieces as well as from true seed. Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are usually transplanted into the garden or your vegetable farm rather than direct-seeded.
Cantaloupe, cucumbers, squash and watermelon may be transplanted if they are grown in individual containers and are transplanted without disturbing their roots. These vining vegetables should be seeded in containers 3 inches or more across, and transplanted about three weeks after seeding.
Vegetable transplants requires initial protection against strong winds, hot sun or freezing temperatures. Hot caps should be made from newspapers or gallon milk jugs with the bottoms removed and use them to as your vegetable protectors.
Irrigation
Vegetables require 1 to 1½ inches of water per week for maximum production. Most years have dry periods when irrigation will greatly increase growth, fruit set, total yield and quality.
The easiest way to irrigate your vegetable farm or garden is with a sprinkler.
Water should be applied slowly to your vegetables to prevent runoff and erosion in your field or garden.
You should place several cylindrical containers in the area covered by the sprinkler to measure the water applied. Apply 1 to 1½ inches of water, then do not irrigate again for several days.
Weed control
Weeds compete with vegetable plants for water, nutrients and sunlight in your home gardens or your vegetable farm. The reduce yields and may cause crop failure unless they are controlled. You should use a combination of mechanical methods and chemical weed killers such as herbicides to eliminate weeds in your vegetable farm or home gardens.
However, it should be noted that most herbicides are not recommended for use in home gardens. This is so because it is difficult to apply small amounts of chemicals uniformly over your garden area. For this reason, hoeing and cultivating are the most common methods of weed control for home gardeners.
Harvesting
Harvesting should be done on clear, dry days, for the fruit vegetables and Individual, manual harvesting is preferable.