Gardening Boxes: The Easy Way to Start a Vegetable Garden

Tip #1: Start Small When Growing Vegetables

One of the biggest hurdles for beginners is the tendency to bite off more than they can chew. The bigger your garden space or raised bed, the more time it requires. Successful gardening requires an investment in watering, weeding, fertilizing, pruning, etc.

You can quickly go overboard with your space and then wind up disillusioned with your experience. For instance, people generally consider a 100-square-foot space (10' x 10') manageable. That's a good deal of area to care for. You could easily find yourself questioning why you started a garden.

Vegetable Planting Boxes are Manageable

That won't happen with gardening boxes. For example, EarthBox gardening boxes are relatively small, measuring about 1 foot wide and 2-3 feet long. That gives you a controlled space. You can start with one or several planting boxes, keeping your focus on a handful of vegetable varieties.

You can even select from smaller planting boxes that are perfect for herbs.

That allows you to ease your way into growing a vegetable garden. If you gain confidence and want to go bigger, add another gardening box or two. Equally important, if vegetable container gardening isn't your cup of tea, you've minimized your investment.

Tip #2: Selecting the Right Location for Your Garden

Traditional garden beds often require ample yard space. But finding that space can be problematic if you live in a more urban area.

You face other considerations even if you have adequate space.

• Does the space receive full sun? Remember, six hours of sun is the benchmark for most vegetables.
• If the space does get plenty of sunlight, do you have a way to shelter plants from scorching weather? Midsummer heat can bake your plants, requiring more frequent watering.
• Is the garden soil suitable? For example, clay-based soil restricts water, nutrients, and airflow. Those conditions reduce your chances of success.
• Do you have a nearby water source? Sure, you could get a long garden hose if your source is 30 feet or more away. But that means unwinding and winding the hose every time you water. You certainly don't want to face the prospect of using a water can!

Vegetable Planting Boxes Simplify Location Selection

Gardening boxes eliminate those other considerations.

First, you can place your gardening container anywhere – balconies, patios, or indoors. Sunlight is the only requirement. Even without sunlight, you still have some options for growing vegetables. For example, lettuce, carrots, peas, broccoli, arugula, and many other vegetables can grow in the shade.

Second, if the weather calls for 90-degree days, you can move your vegetable containers to a more shady location.

Third, a gardening box lets you select the soil. You can create a high-quality, nutrient-rich soil mix or purchase ready-made container soil at a garden center. You can control the soil's pH, organic matter, and nutrient base. You can also ensure your soil has good drainage.

Equally important, considering the small space, you'll spend less effort with the soil. With a raised garden bed, you must contend with more soil, requiring more amendments to make it suitable.

Finally, you can place your gardening containers close to a water source. A watering can will likely do the trick, even if you can't.

Tip # 3: Choose Your Vegetables

The easy way to do it is by selecting vegetables you like. Another route is choosing vegetables that are easy to grow, increasing your chances of success.

The beauty is that vegetables grow equally well in soil or planting boxes. The easiest vegetables to grow include:

• Lettuce
• Peppers
• Green beans
• Zucchini
• Peas
• Tomatoes
• Spinach
• Beets
• Radishes

So whether you plant them in a garden patch, raised bed, or gardening container, you should get an excellent harvest. You can start your garden using seed packets or transplants.

One upside to using gardening boxes is that you'll avoid overplanting. Planting more than you can eat in a larger garden bed is easy. You'll also increase the amount of time you have to care for the plants.

Gardening containers help avoid overplanting, not to mention the time caring for plants.

Tip #4: Designing Your Vegetable Garden

Planning your garden layout is crucial for maximizing space and optimizing plant growth. Your garden design needs to consider plant sizes, for example. You must also plan your paths and spaces for working in the garden.

Understanding plant heights and sizes is critical. If you place a taller plant in front of a shorter one, you block sunlight. Plant a bushy plant next to a more confined plant, and it could quickly overtake it. Or plant an acid-loving plant next to an alkaline-loving plant, and one or both will likely suffer.

Gardening Boxes Let You Move Plant Easily

You won't encounter those challenges with vegetable container gardening. If one plant begins to overshadow another, you can reposition the containers. If you like tomatoes, you can make the soil more acidic for them without affecting cabbage plants that like alkaline soil.

Equally important, you won't have to worry about getting to your plants for care or harvesting. You can move containers in and out of the way to create a working space.

Gardening boxes allow you to work more efficiently with plant placement, companion planting strategies, and crop rotations.

Tip #5: When to Plant Your Vegetable Garden

Every vegetable has a defined growing season and planting time. Some plants need an early start, allowing for a longer growing period. Others grow better earlier or later in the year.

For example, lettuce, broccoli, and peas are cold-season vegetables that grow best in spring and fall. Contrast that with warm-season vegetables like tomatoes and peppers that need warm soil. So you want to plant them once the soil reaches warm enough temperatures.

Other vegetables, like radishes, have smaller production windows. In those cases, you'll want to stagger your planting to take advantage. However, tomatoes need more time to produce. They'll also have a longer harvest time than radishes.

Vegetable Planting Boxes Give You More Control

The compact nature of gardening boxes simplifies the process of timing your plantings. You can even grow plants like tomatoes in containers early indoors before moving them outside.

Vegetable planting boxes let you easily monitor soil temperature and moisture levels. As a result, you can sow or transplant seedlings at the optimal time for each crop.

Additionally, a gardening box offers better control over microclimates. That allows you to extend the growing season and cultivate crops year-round in some regions.

Tip #6: Managing Your Vegetable Garden

The more you bite off, the more you have to chew. A 100-square-foot gardening space takes more time to manage than one or a handful of gardening boxes.

You must amend the soil after each growing season for the best performance. For instance, you'll want to add compost and other organic materials on top of the soil in winter. Come spring, you'll need to clean up all the debris and dead plants.

After planting, you must focus on weeding, watering, and fertilizing. That all takes time. You might start by thinking you can handle the hours required. But if you lose that zeal, the consequence will be dead plants and no vegetable harvest.

Again, vegetable planting boxes allow you to ease into the joy of gardening. The contained space requires less weeding, less cleanup, and less soil to amend.

Indeed, if you use mulch covers on your planting boxes, you'll enjoy a virtually weed-free environment. EarthBox, for example, offers mulch covers for its highly recognized planting boxes.

Self-Watering Garden Boxes Simplify Your Task

With any garden, watering is your most prominent concern. If you have too much water, your plant's roots will rot, killing them. If there is too little water, your plants will wilt, doing the same thing. You'll compromise your harvest even if you can bring them back to life.

Watering becomes even more critical if you live in some areas where drought conditions are a concern. You can spend hours a day watering your vegetable plants, not to mention doing other plant care activities.

Self-watering garden boxes save you countless hours. The reservoir at its bottom lets plants access water when needed. Depending on weather conditions, you only have to worry about filling that reservoir once or twice a week.

SIP Planters Provide Optimal Growing Conditions

More importantly, the self-watering feature ensures optimal growing conditions. You can add an automatic watering system to some planting boxes. EarthBox, for example, offers a system that drips water into the reservoir to maintain appropriate water levels. It includes a sensor that responds to air pressure to make them fully self-watering.

Tip #7: Controlling Pests and Disease in Your Vegetable Garden

If you have plants, you have to worry about pests and diseases. The more significant your space and the more plants you have, the more substantial the concern. Moreover, in larger spaces, you face a considerable challenge dealing with infestations when they happen.

With insects, you face pesky critters like cutworms, cucumber beetles, spider mites, grasshoppers, slugs, etc. You can even suffer bird damage to your plants.

The list of plant diseases covers root rot, leaf spots, anthracnose, rust, downy mildew, blight, and more.

Sometimes, you can have difficulties spotting these concerns until they're out of control. Gardening boxes, however, offer a degree of protection against these threats.

Planting Boxes Make Problem Detection Simpler

Garden soil can house many of these threats. Slugs, for instance, can easily climb onto your greens, destroying the plant. However, elevating your plants above ground level can deter pests like slugs, snails, and ground-dwelling insects.

Gardening boxes are small, so seeing and fixing pest or disease problems is more manageable. That allows you to intervene promptly and prevent widespread damage.

You can also protect plants more readily with insect nets. Covering a substantial garden expanse is difficult. But with gardening boxes, you can quickly stop birds, bugs, and even frost from ruining your crops.

Vegetable Gardening Boxes Offer a Better Chance of Success

Successful gardening comes down to managing your variables. They include location, timing, watering, fertilizing, disease and pest control, and more. You face more challenges mitigating these variables in larger gardening spaces.

But gardening boxes provide the perfect medium for better control of each factor. Moreover, companies like EarthBox have planting kits that give you everything you need for a considerable harvest.

Its plant starter kit includes:

• Planting box
• Water tube filler
• Mulch cover
• Staking system
• Casters
• Fertilizer

Think about it. There is no need to prepare a garden space. There is no need to amend existing soil. No need for concern about watering.

How to start a vegetable garden will go from a concern to a reality. And on your terms without taking too much of your valuable time. How successful can you be? EarthBox guarantees its time and lab-tested growing systems.

Ready to join the world of successful vegetable gardeners? Pick up an EarthBox and start growing!