The Vegetable Garden: Self-service in Your Own Bed

Even relatively small gardens can be well-suited for vegetable gardening if you approach it with planning and care. For example, some vegetables like cucumbers and zucchinis can be grown on a trellis instead of spreading out on the ground, thus requiring much less space than usual.

If only room for a single fruit tree is available, you can ask your gardener if they can graft multiple fruit varieties onto a single rootstock. While only varieties that bloom and ripen around the same time—such as pears and different apple types—are suitable for this, it will create a delightful surprise effect without compromising on enjoyment.

It's also important to consider the life cycle of individual plants when planning your vegetable garden. For example, short-lived crops like peas and sugar snap peas can improve the soil before planting more nutrient-hungry winter vegetables like cabbage, lamb’s lettuce, or leeks. This way, you can harvest multiple times from the same space.

For those with only a terrace, at least a small snack garden with berries, tomatoes, kohlrabi, miniature fruit trees, and delicious treats like physalis, passion fruit, and other similar plants can be grown in pots and containers.

Crop rotation is just one method to sustainably and naturally rejuvenate your soil without resorting to industrial fertilizers. With the help of some very old tips and tricks, you can harvest healthy and delicious vegetables while doing a lot for your health.

Many of these tricks, like planting rose bushes near grapevines to prevent vine diseases or pairing garlic with strawberries to ward off pests, are well-known, but who knows, for example, that lettuce benefits from being planted near strawberries, as well as radishes, cucumbers, and cabbage?

Whether you have access to horse manure from a nearby farm, create your own compost, or use microorganisms to activate your soil, there are many ways to produce large and tasty garden products using natural methods.

Whether you're planting traditional vegetable beds, raised beds, or containers and boxes, it's important to plan ahead and think about how you can create paths that allow you to comfortably access your plants for working and harvesting.

You can frame these paths nicely with small plants, wood, or stones to mark them. And to complete the composition, sprinkle mulch or pebbles on the paths, so you always have a firm footing, stay clean and dry, and weeds don't stand a chance!