Growing Vegetables in the Ground

Part Five of the Vegetable Patch from Scratch Series

The last two posts focussed on raised garden beds and wicking beds. This week I look at a cheaper and more flexible method for growing vegetables: Growing them in the ground.

Often gardeners have a view that there must be one designated space for the vegetable patch and that vegetables need to be grown in a raised bed. This doesn’t have to be the case.

Growing your vegetables directly in the ground is a cheap and flexible approach. It can also provide more consistent growing conditions for your plants.

The benefits of growing in the ground are:

• It’s far cheaper to grow in the ground as you don’t need to purchase raised beds and the soil to fill them.

• The space is flexible. You can start small, and if you find that you need more space, just take over more lawn. If you took on too much, just let some of it go back to lawn.

• Growing in the ground usually provides more consistent soil conditions so your plants will usually thrive much better.

Simply choose an area and remove all the existing lawn and unwanted vegetation. Dig some quality compost directly into the ground and grow vegetables in the space. This approach allows gardeners to parcel out their energy and break the project down into manageable sections. Trying to transform a large landscape in this way would otherwise be impossible.

This front yard vegetable patch was originally a lawn. I helped my enthusiastic clients to turn it into this productive patch.

This approach can also be useful if you have moved to a new property and want to spend a year or more observing the space before committing to any formal kitchen garden plan. You can spend time growing vegetables and improving the soil. It also provides you with an opportunity to observe how different vegetables grow in your particular microclimate. There is nothing permanent about growing vegetables directly in the ground. Therefore, no formal landscape plan or design is required. If you decide after a year or so that you want to grow the vegetables somewhere else, then you can easily convert the original vegetable patch to a perennial garden bed or allow it to go back to being lawn. Growing in the ground is my preferred choice for rental gardens.

As a renter, I preferred on growing vegetables in the ground as a cheap and flexible approach. It is relatively easy to return the space to lawn when you vacate your tenancy.

The main drawbacks of growing directly in the ground are:

• Roots from established trees can quickly invade the space and outcompete your vegetables, as discussed in Part 2.

• The garden bed boundaries are less defined and can make it challenging to regulate the access of children or pets.

• Mobility issues may limit your ability to bend to tend your plants or work the soil.

All things considered, growing in the ground is my preferred method for raising vegetable crops.

What’s your preferred growing method? In the ground? Raised beds?

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This post is one of many in my gardening series Vegetable Patch from Scratch. See the series index for a list of other topics in the series.