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.

Citrus Fruit

Lemon, lime and orange trees are extremely cold-sensitive and only do well in the warmer parts of Zone 9 and warmer zones. If you live in a cooler zone (Zone 7), try tangerine or mandarin trees, which are the most cold hardy of the citrus trees.

Citrus trees need:

• Sunlight: Choose a spot that gets lots of sun.
• Cold tolerance: Even a moderate freeze can seriously damage or kill a citrus tree. If occasional freezing weather can be expected in your area, choose a planting site on the south side of a building for protection from colder temperatures.
• Moisture levels: Citrus trees grow best in well-drained, sandy soil. They like to dry out between waterings and prefer a thorough soaking around their drip line, the soil area under the outer limbs of the tree’s branches.
• Mulch: This is especially important during the initial growing period of new trees. It discourages weed growth and minimizes competition for nutrients.
• Attention: Citrus trees need little attention, just pruning to help form their structure when they are young.

Lemon trees produce fragrant flowers all year long. Most of the flower production occurs in late February and March. Once the tree is mature, it can produce hundreds of thousands of blooms. Only about 2 percent of the blooms result in edible fruit–which is true of all citrus trees.

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