Exploring Ideas: Designing Outdoor Living Spaces
GROW VEGETABLE & EDIBLE GARDENS: HOME-GROWN TASTES BEST
Venture outside into your yard and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine and imagine a lush vegetable garden and/or a garden with edibles; colorful sweet blackberries, showy flavorful nasturtiums and chive blossoms. Vegetable and edible gardening lures you outside, provides your family with an interactive productive activity for all ages and helps to ensure that you will provide your family with fresh and nutritious food grown at home. It’s easy to get started and soon you’ll be harvesting from your own edible garden; home-grown tastes best.
Our Garden Center is stocked with select vegetable and edible plants. We offer curbside pickup for your gardening needs; exclusions apply. Please call for more details; 703-354-6724. We would love to help you with your garden and landscape needs. Our talented designers and expert crews are available to help bring any landscape dreams you have for your outside living environment to fruition. Click here to request an appointment with a landscape designer.
Quick-Start Guide:
- Select a location that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight and has access to water.
- A moisture meter will help to determine your watering needs. Loving your plants with too much water will drown them; water as needed. Consider using a soaker hose.
- Determine and measure how much space is available for your vegetable garden and if you will plant your vegetables in the ground, in a raised garden bed or in containers.
- Planting in the ground: remove rocks, debris, and weeds, til soil incorporating organic soil amendments, then rake smooth. Space your rows of plants at least 18-36 inches apart to allow ample room for you to work and for the plants to grow.
- Kits are available for raised garden beds or design and build your own. Raised garden beds enable you to have instant healthy nutrient-rich soil without the soil-preparation work. Fill the raised bed with a pre-packaged garden soil up to approximately 4 inches from the top and rake smooth.
- Containers are a perfect choice for small spaces or urban gardens.
- Decide if you will start your plants from seeds or from starter plants and determine what vegetables your family will eat.
- Seeds need to be started indoors approximately 6-8 weeks prior to transferring to the outdoors. Follow directions on the seed packet. We do not sell seeds.
- Plant starter plants after the last frost; Zone 7 last frost date is April 15. Please note that those tasty tomatoes are especially sensitive to the cold.
- Easy to grow vegetables include lettuce, kale, cucumbers, peas, radishes, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini and summer squash.
- Most vegetable plants prefer soil with good drainage. Amend heavy clay soil to avoid water from not draining and to prevent soil from draining too much when sandy.
Enjoy growing edibles together as a family while gardening outside in the sunshine and fresh air.
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