Growing your own vegetables is a great way to reduce your food bill and get better quality produce that tastes far better than any of the stuff you can get at the supermarket. It would be great if you could just throw some seeds in the ground and wait for the magic to happen but it isn’t that easy. Growing vegetables takes a lot of hard work and careful tending, but if you’ve seemingly been doing everything right but your vegetables just aren’t growing, you might be making one of these mistakes.

Image From Maxpixel

Pests

The number one thing that is going to destroy your vegetable patch is insects and creepy crawlies. I recently had a big problem with slugs eating anything and everything I planted and I tried everything to get rid of them. All of the slug pellets etc. that I bought didn’t prove effective and they still managed to find a way around them. In the end, I used a more natural remedy of old coffee grounds and broken up eggshells sprinkled around the plants. The slugs hate it and they haven’t been around since.

As well as slugs you’ve got to think about spiders, greenflies, mites and all sorts of other bugs that love to chow down on your vegetables. You can use pesticides to get rid of them, but you’ve got to be very careful, which brings us on to our next point.

Pesticides

When you’re getting frustrated with all of those bugs getting at your vegetable patch it might be tempting to grab some bug spray and go to town on them. It will kill all of those bugs that you don’t want, but it’s important to remember that some bugs are actually beneficial to the garden, eating the pests and maintaining the soil etc. If you blast them all away with a powerful pesticide, you might actually be doing more harm than good. You can use pesticides but use them sparingly and try some of the natural remedies instead.  

Watering

Watering the plants is obviously vital if you want your vegetables to grow but there are a lot of mistakes you can make. If you’re not watering enough, watering too much or using a powerful hose that disturbs the roots, you’ll damage the vegetables and they won’t grow. Do some research into the watering guidelines for each of the plants that you’re trying to grow and stick to them. If it’s been raining a lot, remember to cut back on your watering to compensate for it.

Planting Close To Windows

Monitoring the heat of the plants is important as well but that’s difficult if you plant too close to the windows. The sunlight will reflect off the glass and heat the vegetables. If you notice that they’re withering or starting to discolour, that’s an indication that they’re too warm. Always try to plant things as far from the window as possible to avoid any overheating.

If you avoid these mistakes, your vegetable garden will flourish and you’ll be making delicious meals with it in no time.  

*Collaborative post