How to cultivate vegetables

September 24, 2009 by The Gardener
Filed under Gardening

Before we discuss the art of vegetable cultivation, let me briefly outline the principles behind cultivation in general.

Cultivation is a process by which the soils is freed from weeds and encourage growth. This is bone for following two procedures: pumping in air into the soil and triggering availability of unavailable food and holding on to soil moisture.

The importance of cleaning his garden of weeds is something which any gardener knows whether he is an amateur or a professional. Weeds grow extremely fast and perhaps the crop has just seen two days’ of healthy growth when immediately after a splash of rain, the weeds have nearly covered all his legitimate crops! It is extremely difficult to remove weds from within the crops without harming the tender plants. Imagine a patch of carrots or onions, which is suddenly covered with weeds – it means that those unwanted growth is taking away precious nutrition right from under his own crops.

Thus not only is removing unwanted weeds important but repeated cultivation is also necessary for letting in fresh air, moisture and heat into the soil. All these are needed for transforming all the unavailable nutrients carried by the soil into some meaningful food which the plants can survive on. Much before any agricultural theory was developed on this aspect, cultivators and farmers had realized the importance of loosening the soil as much as possible for a healthy crop to grow. Remember plant roots not only need to eat nutrients, they also need plenty of fresh air to survive.

Next to air, the next important thing a plant needs is water. The importance of water to the soil can not be seen or felt, unless you appreciate this scientific phenomenon called the ‘capillary action’. Hold a strip of blotting paper in your hand and hold it in a glass of water. Water immediately rises through the invisible tubes formed inside the paper. Now cut across another strip and hold the two edges and repeat the procedure. The water will not rise to cross the line as the connection has been cut.

Much in a similar way, the water contained under the soil is continuously evaporating back into the atmosphere. The water on the surface obviously vaporizes first and then the water underneath; through millions of invisible tubes. You could stop this unnecessary waste by repeated cultivation where the soil surface is dug up not more than one or two inches deep. What you are actually doing thereby is to cut off the connection in the tube! So, when you severe the connection in the tube for the water to evaporate, you are able to maintain a mulch of dust just underneath and preserving valuable moisture for most small vegetables to grow and prosper.

The ideal thing to do is to cultivate those areas of your garden which are not under any shade once every 10 or 15 days. Does that look like too much work? Simply, push the wheel hoes right across as fast you can walk whereby you will keep the dust mulch as a constant protection. If you wait for the weeds to appear, you will never be able to walk fast on the soil and will harm the new plantlets by doing this activity. The weeds in any case have eaten all the vital nutrients.

Now that you know the importance of cultivating the land, you will naturally ask me, how can I do this? The answer is: get a wheel hoe. Get one of the simple ones as they can save you hours of labor if you are trying to do everything by hand. Of course it is possible to grow a vegetable garden without a wheel hoe but a small investment made right at the beginning will save you hundreds of man hours later. A wheel hoe makes the task of cultivation extremely easy and if you have trouble getting, at least get a scuffle hoe.

Getting rid of weeds is no easy task. While some hand work is necessary, here are a few suggestions which will reduce your work load: Do this job when the soil is wet – immediately after the rain. During this time the soil is soft and easy to pull out the weeds without breaking them. Just before weeding, take a wheel hoe and cut a narrow visible strip which is shallow over the rows of plantation. Remember this narrow strip has to be cleaned of weeds using your hands. The best tool for doing this job is a double wheel how with a disc attachment, or you could use hoes meant for large plants. You must take care to take out every bit of weed and see that the soil is adequately broken up. Just as you weed out the mature weeds, you should also destroy the sprouting weeds which are about to grow. To save your fingers from over-wear, you could use a simple hand weeder to accomplish this job comfortably.

To acquire the requisite skill of handling a wheel hoe you simply need lots of practice. The only place to watch while using this tool is the wheels only. The rake, disc or blades can take care of themselves.

At the time of second or third hoeing, you have to do a simple operation called ‘hilling’, which is nothing but gathering a mound of soil around the stem of the plant. The ‘hilling’ procedure is now nearly discarded and currently taken over by a process called ‘level culture’. The reason for such discarding is very apparent: when you make a small mount around the stem, the two angular inclines have more exposed surface than the base level. Going by the theory of soil evaporation from the surface, the inclines are obviously larger the base area and more moisture tend to evaporate from these surfaces. While in wet soils hilling is advisable, but very seldom on other soil types. The inclines also carry a disadvantage in the sense that it is difficult to maintain the dust mulch which is essential for soil maintenance.

Rotation of crops.

To get the maximum out of your soil, there is one important rule to be followed in vegetable gardening if you want healthy and rich vegetable crops. That is called crop rotation. The fundamental rules of crop rotation are:

Crops of the same vegetable family – like cabbage and turnips should not be planted one after the other.
Vegetables which feed near the surface of the soil like corn must be planted after deep-rooting crops.
Root crops must be followed by vine or leaf crops.
Crops that grow quickly should follow crops which are grown all season and occupy the land throughout the season.

Thus when you are making the plantation plan, you must keep this rotation principle in mind. You can expect the crops to be healthy and grow without any more attention to it.

If you keep the above suggestions in mind, you can be the owner of a vegetable garden that will do you proud

Darren Williger is a tea drinking, guitar playing, meditating, wine making sales maker who writes for MiniGarden.com, RoseMaven.com, and HomemadeWine.com.