Growing a vegetable garden can be satisfying specially when the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious produce is harvested from your garden. Mostly we’ve been talking about flower gardens, but vegetable gardens can also be fun for beginning gardeners. Vegetable gardens can sometimes be more work than flower gardens. The good news is that having a vegetable garden will give you all the benefits of a flower garden with the added benefit of fresh produce.

There is nothing like eating fresh tomatoes, cucumbers or other vegetables straight from the garden, or picking strawberries, raspberries and blueberries right off the bush.  If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on food or are on a fixed income, growing your own produce can be a great way to supplement your diet with healthy all natural food.

If you want to have flowers but love the idea of growing a vegetable garden and to eat as well, consider starting a potager. A Potager is a French kitchen garden where vegetables, flowers, and herbs that are used in cooking are all grown together. The idea behind the Potager is that the flowers are aesthetically pleasing while the vegetable are nutritious and delicious food and the herbs complement the vegetables.

Potagers are increasingly popular in the US because more and more people are trying to live a Green lifestyle where they do not contribute to the over consumption of natural resources and are more aware of their diets and where their food comes from. Most varieties of vegetables are wonders of plant breeding-uniform in size and shape, high yielding, disease-resistant hybrids.

They’re great for commercial growers and shippers and for the supermarket that sells them. They would be great for home gardens too, if old-fashioned qualities like taste and texture didn’t have to be sacrificed in the breeding process.

One of the advantages of starting or growing a vegetable garden is that you can grow vegetables just about anywhere.  In dense urban areas where there are few grocery stores that offer high quality produce at reasonable prices, neighbors band together to start community gardens on small patches of land or even in soil boxes on rooftops or in alleys to grow their own vegetables.

There are really a few steps in growing great vegetables. One is choosing the best varieties, but there are also some few tips and tricks that can enhance the quality of your harvest. It’s a good idea t have the garden close to the house as you can, both for the convenience of working in it during spare moments and for the case of harvest.

You’ll probably find that having the garden right at hand will mean you use more of its produce in the kitchen. Some charity groups like Heifer International work with schools in urban areas to use vegetable gardens to teach kids about nutrition, environmental issues, and living better. The kids are given plots of land or soil boxes that they are responsible for and their families get to keep the vegetables that they grow.

Growing a vegetable garden together can be a great way to teach kids healthy eating habits and proper nutrition. A vegetable garden can be a fun alternative to a flower garden, or start a Potager and experiment with growing flowers, vegetables, and herbs to see which type of gardening you like the best!