Designing Your Organic Vegetable Garden – A Detailed Guide

Modern gardens in all sense have transformed in leaps and bounds, especially after the advent of the Organic Vegetable Gardens. Growing vegetables has become more than a hobby or a profession, it has become a necessity.

Even a small space off late can be used to grow vegetables that is chemical free and healthy.

I have always been glad that we live in Chhattisgarh because people here still have not in any sense wanted to catch up with commercialized world. The people and the ecosystem is serene by all sense, an world, we are far healthier.

So, now lets design that wonderful Organic Vegetable Garden

Depending on the place you live, space you have and the time you can spend on gardening you can decide on the design of your organic vegetable garden.

Indoor Organic Vegetable Garden

I know you must be staring now; yes of course there are some veggies that you can grow indoors. When I speak of indoors, do not forget to include your yards and back work area, which in flats is mostly used only to store unwanted things.

I would say, when you go for indoors, begin with herbs. The best herb that I have found to be excellent to be growing anywhere and everywhere is mint leaves.

You can grow mint leaves in the smallest possible container – I have used even the coffee mug. There are many varieties of mint, go for the climbers, it will not only need less soil space but also can be spread on the window sil – looks beautiful and gives superb fragrance too.

Other plants that you can grow indoors is ginger, palak, greens and salad leaves, onions (only for their leaves), garlic, baby carrots, baby radhishes, cucumbers and so on.

You can use small pots, beautiful accessories like mugs or other containers that you would not be using for growing vegetables.

Or buy these beautiful grow bags, you can use them for 3 consecutive years.

Trustbasket Large Poly Grow Bags Uv Stabilized 10 Qty [24Cms(L)X24Cms(W)X40Cms(H)]

Minimalistic Approach to Growing Your Veggies

Although I would love to buy some wonderful looking pots and place them in some eye catchy location, it is not that economical, especially because of the frequent change of place.

So I always enjoy using the wasted bottles (oh, I have a lot of them), vehicle tires, mud pots and bamboo stems.

This not only will help you in designing great looking organic vegetable gardens, but also will lessen the burden on the environment to decay the plastics.

I sometimes use the wine and other glass bottles too, which are best for onions and leeks.

You can plant your greens, carrot, radhish, onions, tomato, and other herbs. I am not a fan of foreign herbs, I choose to keep everything close to the place we live in and hence never try any exotic varieties or veggies and fruits. But you sure can try strawberries (which I did this time and got real great result – Oh do try them after October, strawberries are best in winter, however I do have a couple of plants still fruiting at 41⁰ C)

You can buy these potato planters to grow potatoes too.

Garden Vegetables Grow Bag Potato Planter Gardeners’ Grow Bags – Potato Planter

Spreading Up

This is something that is close to my heart – vertical gardening.

I love to use every inch of space that is available in, vertical space is special among them.

Read the basic rules of vertical gardening here

Using your French windows, poles, walls and all the other sunny spots in your home is where vertical garden comes in.

You can grow all kinds of organic vegetables in vertical spaces.

Border You Flowers With Veggies

If you have a plot with flowers growing in them, feel free to plant some border vegetables, you know they look wonderful, you also have the satisfaction of using maximum space.

You can plant beans, radish, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, coriander, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, baby corn, spinach, mint leaves, curry leaves and so on.

bsln vertical planter pack of 3 pots

Expert Tips

1. Check the season before planting, it needs to be apt for the vegetable you choose
2. Check for space requirement, the vegetable should not cause shade effect to flower plant

Long Plant – Short Plant

Choose plants that differ in height, this will give enough sunlight to each one of them and help in better use of space and also gives greater harvest

You can use following plants

1. Baby corn + tomato + spinach
2. Tomato (climber type) + chillies + coriander.
3. Beans + brinjal + mint.

While using a pot you can make it into different rounds, from exterior to interior of the pot, tall at the centre and short at the periphery.

The 15 Days Interval Planting

This is what I practice, especially for greens. In Chhattisgarh, we get 36 types of greens, and I use a lot of greens at home and I wouldn’t be able to successfully use them if all were ready for harvest at the same time.

In fact, more than planting you should be concentrating on harvesting time. It is the nuclear family system all over the country now and you are limited to feed 2 to 3 members of your family at the max. Hence plan the harvest time, plant wisely.

You can follow the 15 day interval time of planting the same type of crop. Like for tomatoes, chillies, brinjal, cole crops, gourds (gourds, plant only after a month of the first one begins flowering)

You can make a simple one line rows in your garden

Or if you are planting in a pot

This way you get the harvest of day 1 around the 20^th to 25^th day and you can use it for one to two days. In another 2 days your next row would be ready and so on.