Eat what you grow: How to grow your own vegetables at home

Key steps

To grow vegetables in your garden follow these key steps:

1. Make sure you have adequate space and the tools you need.
2. Buy seeds or get cuttings from friends.
3. Plant and tend to your growing veg daily to monitor their progress.
4. Enjoy the fruits (and veg) of your labour!

The organic craze that's sweeping the world is great for the planet and our own wellbeing but buying organic in the supermarket can add up. Growing vegetables at home can be a great way to eat great produce, live more sustainably, and develop a new hobby. Follow our tips on how to grow your own vegetables, regardless of whether you have a garden, allotment patch or just a few planters on your balcony.

How to grow your own vegetables

Just follow these eight steps:

Step 1: Do your research

It will take a bit of time to know where and how is most suitable for you to grow own vegetables. If you want to know how to grow vegetables at home look for a suitable and big enough space whether that’s window planters or a patch in the garden. If you’re inspired by vegetables garden ideas but don’t have your own outdoor space look into renting an allotment nearby.

Step 2: Get in the necessary equipment

As with all kitchen garden ideas, growing your own vegetables requires a bit of kit. At the very least you’ll need good quality soil, seeds, a trowel, a watering can and depending on the setting growing sticks and netting (for protection).

Step 3: Prepare the soil

To successfully grown own vegetables, you’ll need to make sure the soil is prepared. It’s no good just stealing some from outside. Try to get nutritious, moist and bug-free soil to give your plants the best chance in life. For extra points, make your own compost from household food waste!

Step 4: Plant the seeds / cuttings

Place the seeds / cuttings gently in the soil with a little space between each one. Be sure to label what you plant so you know how to treat each one differently.

Step 5: Tend to your plants

In a home vegetable garden you’re unlikely to have lots and lots of different varieties, but even so it’s worth looking up the specific requirements of each plant so you can give them what they need.

Step 6: Harvest

When they’re ready, harvest all your veg and enjoy the satisfaction of growing your own food. Don’t be shy about posting pictures on social media and giving excess produce away as it might just encourage other people to get involved and start growing things too.

Step 9: Repeat the process all over again

Now you know how to grow vegetables at home you can repeat the process whenever you like. Use the vegetables you grew to provide the next batch of seeds and each time you grow a new crop you’ll learn new things and be able to try out new techniques.

Where to grow your own vegetables?

Where you grow your veggies will depend on the space you have available. There are plenty of vegetable garden ideas for those with small outside spaces such as planting veggies in window-boxes. You can also choose to rent an allotment or even grow some veggies indoors.

There’s nothing more satisfying that growing vegetables at home. They taste that much better not just because they’re not covered in pesky pesticides, but also because of all the hard work and care that you put into them.