Start Planning a Vegetable Garden

Light Requirements

Vegetables, like many flowers, need lots of sunlight to thrive and produce tasty vegetables. Most vegetables need full sunlight, which gardeners define as six or more hours of sunlight per day. This direct sunlight stimulates the plant’s cells to produce the food it needs through photosynthesis to build a strong root system and produce fruit.

Many people are confused about what type of light they have in the garden. Try this simple test. Pick a day when you’re home and can observe the garden. Take a look at the garden area you want to grow vegetables in first thing in the morning, and write down whether or not the sun is actually touching the ground. Look for full, bright sun, not dappled sunlight filtering through tree leaves. Now set a kitchen timer or alarm clock and return to your observation once an hour or once every two hours until dinnertime, marking down how much light the spot in the garden receives. Then, add up all the times you saw direct light. This will give you an idea of whether you’re working with full sun, partial sun or shade.

While you can grow some vegetables in partial sun, most will struggle. If the entire yard gets only partial sun or shade due to immovable objects like garages, homes, or trees in neighbors’ yards, look for a place that gets bright direct sunlight and grow vegetables in pots instead.

Black Berries to the Fullest

There are two types of blackberries: the upright varieties grow vertically, and the trailing types send out horizontal runners . The trailing varieties like to set down roots and take off in the garden at the end of the growing season. In the fall, the terminal growth will grow into the soil and root to form a new plant, which may be a problem if you don’t want plants all over your yard. To prevent unwanted roaming, Ingels suggests creating a plant barrier. One such barrier is this in-ground device  that reaches about a foot deep into the soil. Barriers may be made of concrete, redwood, plastic, stainless steel, or pretty much anything that blocks meandering roots. However, most home gardeners opt for easier methods of keeping berries in check, such as diligent hoeing and a thick layer of mulch.

Managing where these plants grow is one thing, but managing how they grow is another. Most varieties of blackberries bear fruit on two-year-old shoots called floricanes. Next year, this year’s floricanes will be replaced by new shoots, primocanes. After they’ve fruited, the canes die back and should be cut down to make room for the new primocanes. While that may sound complicated, it’s easy to tell the difference between the old growththat requires pruning out, and the new growth  that bears next year’s berries. There is an exception to pruning brambleberries: for everbearing or fall-bearing types, cut those to the ground every winter.