Starting a Vegie Patch

• It's a good idea to start small and ease yourself into it. You can plan a 1x1 metre square garden bed, or even start with a large 40-50cm diameter pot. You might end up with more seedlings than you need at first, but you'll be able to give them to friends and whānau.
• You can build a garden bed with a wide range of materials, depending on your budget. Raised garden beds are an excellent way to start growing vegies. Raised garden bed kits, made of metal sheeting or timber sleepers, are available at hardware stores and garden centres. Most are easy to put together, and some don't require tools to assemble.
• You can also create a garden bed by recycling what you have on hand. Lengths of timber, bricks, logs, pipes, ponga or wheki trunks all work well as garden edging.
• What if you don't have an outdoor space, or you need a portable solution? There are self-contained raised garden beds available, that can be positioned anywhere, including on balconies and other hard surfaces. Also keep an eye out for large pots, barrels, bathtubs or fish bins. They can all be used as vegie containers; they'll work perfectly if you remember to water them daily.

Where to Put Your Vegie Patch

• Look for the sun – most vegies need at least six hours of direct sunlight to do well. Sun is really important for fruiting vegies like tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis. Some leafy vegies and herbs, like lettuce, silverbeet, spinach and basil, can be grown in a spot with a few less hours of sun. Seed packets and seedling nursery tags will indicate how much sun that plant needs.
• Locating your vegie patch near a tap, for hose access, is also a good idea. Lugging full watering cans backwards and forwards to a vegie patch starts to feel like hard work, pretty quickly.

How to Get Started

• You can create a vegie patch in an existing garden bed, or on an area of lawn.
• On a lawn, using a sharp spade, remove as much of the grass and its roots from the surface as you can. It's a big job to remove every last bit of lawn, so you can also lay damp sheets of newspaper (at least six sheets thick), or cardboard over the area to help out. This helps to smother any remaining grass. Then, cover the area with 10–15 cm of good quality potting soil or garden mix, from your favourite local garden centre. It's helpful to surround your new vegie patch with timber or bricks, to help keep the soil contained.
• Raised garden beds can be sited on top of a section of lawn. As they're usually at least 30cm deep, the lawn doesn't need to be removed first. Just lay down wet newspaper, at least six sheets thick, where the bed will be placed. Next, the bed needs to be filled with soil. Don't dig out soil from your garden to fill the bed, as it may not have the correct 'structure' to promote healthy plant growth. Your local garden centre will have bagged or bulk garden soil that's been specially blended for filling garden beds. Fill the bed with garden mix or soil, leaving about 10cm between the top of the new soil and the top of the bed.

• One of the many benefits of growing vegies in raised beds, is that it doesn't matter whether your garden has sandy soil or clay soil. By filling the bed with quality garden mix, it elevates the root zone of your vegies above the ground below, bypassing the soil underneath.  
• Soil is the engine room of your vegie patch, so creating healthy soil is important! Before planting seedlings or sowing seeds, mix some handfuls of Yates Dynamic Lifter Plant Food into the soil. Yates Dynamic Lifter contains a concentrated blend of organic ingredients that enrich and improve the soil, to help give new plants a great start.

• Sow seeds or plant seedlings, straight into your new bed or pot. For inspiration on what vegie seeds are suitable for your climate at this time of year, visit our Yates Seed Finder. Just click the filter checkboxes to select the month you want.
• There are countless different types of vegetables to choose. If you're new to gardening, lettuce, zucchini, silverbeet, spring onions, rocket and salad leaves, parsley and basil are all really easy to grow and don't take up too much space.
• It’s also a great idea to sow the vegies that are consistently expensive in supermarkets – capsicums, tomatoes and chillies are good examples.
• Position larger plants at the back of the vegie patch, and more compact plants at the front. If your vegie patch is next to a fence, attaching a wire frame to the fence will let you grow climbers like cucumbers and beans.
• If your vegie patch is in a pot, a 50cm diameter pot will allow you to grow a variety of loose leaf lettuces and a dwarf tomato plant, or a handy combination of kitchen herbs like basil, chives and parsley. Choose a quality potting mix, like Yates Premium Potting Mix.
• If you have spare space, include some flowers in your vegie patch. They look lovely, they act as companion plants for your vegies, and they attract the beneficial insects your vegies need for pollination.

Vegie Patch Growing Tips

Watering & Mulching

Vegies need their soil (or potting mix) to be consistently moist, but not wet. It's easy to check moisture levels in the soil by digging around in the top few centimetres with your finger. You'll be able to feel whether the soil is moist enough, or if it's dry and needs watering. Depending on the weather, you'll need to water your vegie patch several times a week. During hot weather, watering may be required every day. Vegies growing in pots or containers always need to be watered every day, as they dry out much faster than vegies in garden soil.

Applying a layer of mulch (e.g. pea straw) over the soil surface, can help retain moisture. The added benefit of using mulch is that it can suppress the growth of weeds.

Protecting From Pests

Snails and Slugs can decimate seedlings very quickly, so it's a good idea to lightly sprinkle some Yates Blitzem Slug & Snail Pellets around the plants. As plants get bigger they become more resilient to being chewed and they aren't as attractive to the snails.

Keep monitoring for chewing pests like caterpillars, especially if cabbage white butterfly are flying around your vegies. Control them with a spray of Yates Success Ultra Insect Control.

Sucking insects like aphids or whitefly can cause leaves to yellow and distort. As soon as pests are spotted, protect your vegies with Yates Nature’s Way Citrus, Vegie & Ornamental Insect Spray.

Feeding

It's important to feed your vegies regularly, so they can feed you! Vegies need lots of nutrients to build delicious leaves and tasty fruit. Fortunately, feeding is simple! Just mix two capfuls of Yates Thrive Natural Vegie & Herb Liquid Plant Food in a 9L watering can and apply it around your plants every 1–2 weeks. It's a real time saver, as you're watering and feeding at the same time.

And finally, if you don't get the results you were hoping for, don't give up! Growing vegies can be extremely rewarding, but you might meet some challenges along the way. It's completely normal.

Check out the 'How to Grow' pages on the Yates website, for more details about how to grow particular vegies and herbs, along with solutions for some of the most common problems.