How to Start a Vegetable Garden That Helps Feed Your Family


Growing your own food can vary from a fun pastime to an involved hobby to a full-time job. It all depends on just how much food you want to grow. No matter your eventual goal, starting small with gardening is practical, inexpensive, and rewarding. In this blog, we will cover the steps you should take if you’re interested in beginning to grow your food.


A Quick Disclaimer

We here at The Drip Store love gardening, but our expertise is with irrigation, aka watering the plants. We can help you water any type and number of plants, but gardening - from your classic hobby gardener up to a full-fledged homesteader - is far more than just watering plants. Our suggestions here are intended as a broad outline of the process, not a comprehensive manual. Be sure to supplement what we tell you with information from expert sources on the other aspects of gardening and homesteading.


Step 1: Determine Your Goal

As with any venture, it’s important to figure out what your goal is before you start. In order of complexity and time commitment, here are some examples to get you started:

Freshen Up Your Cooking: fresh herbs and vegetables go a long way toward making your cooking feel fresh and unique, and a small vegetable garden or a few herbs in containers is a simple way to achieve that.

Summer Bounty: most veggies grow best in spring and summer, and many can be planted such that you can continually harvest and eat them during the warm season. Planting a vegetable garden with the easiest growing conditions in mind is a worthy goal, and can be achieved with a few raised beds, some potting soil from your local garden center, and a simple irrigation system.

Year-Round Harvests: if you’re willing to dedicate more time and effort to gardening, you can supplement your grocery shopping with vegetables year-round. This requires growing a variety of different plants so that you always have something ready to eat. Depending on the amount of produce you want to grow and your location, this may require dedication of significant space outdoors and potentially some indoor space in your house or a greenhouse.

Homesteading: for those who want to try their hand at self-sufficiency, homesteading is the name of the game. The concept goes far beyond simply growing food, but gardening - more like farming, in this case - is an integral part of it. Consider this if you’re more interested in having a few months' worth of carrots and potatoes in your cellar than you are in throwing a couple of home-grown summer squash on the grill at your next summer BBQ.

Step 2: Pick The Right Plants for the Job

Once you know what goal you’re looking to achieve, consider what plants will help you achieve it. There is a huge variety of vegetables and other edible plants to pick from, and they all have their uses. While most vegetables are grown in the same way - put them in the ground, water them, watch them grow - they are not all suitable for the same goals.

Simple Goals: herbs like rosemary, basil, and thyme are simple to grow in-ground or in containers, can be harvested constantly, and are used all the time while cooking. Summer squash and zucchini are very productive in the summer months and taste great fresh. Radishes grow from seed to harvest extremely quickly, which means you can get to the fruits (or vegetables) of your labor in short order. Snow peas are delicious straight off the vine or on a salad, and aren’t terribly difficult to grow.

Intermediate Goals: fresh sweet corn and watermelon are unrivaled for a summer BBQ, and both can be very productive without requiring a huge amount of space. Carrots are great fresh out of the ground and can also last a long time under the right conditions. Green onions are simple to grow and harvest, and if you end up leaving them in the ground they won’t care. Add some leafy greens like lettuce and some tomatoes to the mix and you’re close to having a whole salad ready to eat without stepping foot in the grocery store.

Advanced Goals: most of the plants we’ve mentioned don’t grow during the winter, so you’ll want to round out your garden with cold-weather crops. Beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and more can weather cold temperatures, though whether they can hack it outdoors or will require some kind of extra care depends on your area. Garlic is a kitchen all-star that typically requires being left in the ground over winter. Staples like onions keep well and are used in a ton of recipes. Lastly, since you’re not shooting for instant gratification, you can consider fun crops like popping corn.

Expert Goals: if you want to homestead like a pro, you probably don’t want to be taking your hints from a blog post on an irrigation website. That being said, think of what you normally buy at the store, then think about how to make it yourself. Onions, garlic, carrots, and potatoes all last a long time if preserved properly. Potatoes are especially calorically dense, too. Other options are turnips, parsnips, and grain corn for making corn flour. Speaking of which, if you’ve got the space and mettle, you can grow your own wheat! Growing it really isn’t the complicated part, but that’s for another blog post.

Step 3: Layout and Location

Whether you should draw a layout or pick a location first depends on your circumstances, but one way or another you’ll need to decide how you want to lay out your garden and where exactly you’re going to put it.

Layout: for simple goals, this can be as straightforward as “I’m just going to arrange some pots near each other,” but the more advanced your goals are, the more research you’ll need to put into your layout. An efficient layout isn’t necessary for growing a few plants during the summer months, but if you’re trying to cut your grocery bill in half - or eliminate it altogether - you’ll need to make the most out of every square foot. This is part of the process that The Drip Store can help with the most, as you’ll want your layout to accommodate a drip irrigation system (unless you want to hand water, of course)

If you have a large backyard to work with but aren’t going to use it exclusively for gardening, raised beds are a good way to add garden space without needing to till up and amend your whole yard. Raised beds can grow a huge amount of food if planted and maintained correctly, and we conveniently sell some excellent raised bed irrigation kits. That being said, if your backyard is small or you’re aiming to significantly impact your grocery bill, you might need to plant in-ground to maximize your planting space. Growing potatoes to store over winter will require a good amount of space, as will growing enough wheat to cover your baking needs. Corn can be space efficient if planted alongside squash and pole beans in the time-tested “three sisters” method.

Location: If you’re shooting for a simple goal, check out our blog post on how to start a garden. It goes over everything to consider for a simple backyard garden. For more advanced goals, you need to think about everything in that blog post and more. Plants like corn need to be planted in fairly dense blocks to maximize wind-driven pollination. If your goal requires a lot of plants that need full sun but you have a very shady backyard, you may need to amend your plan or remove shade-casting plants or structures to improve your growing area. If your zone is particularly harsh and you want to grow and harvest year-round, you may need to make space for (and build or buy) a greenhouse for use in the winter months. All gardens will require fertilizer to some extent, and if you plan to make your own by composting, make sure to allocate space for that.

When thinking about location, don’t forget about the animals that share your garden area. Is there a part of your yard that your dog likes to do its business in? Maybe don’t plant your summer squash there. If you get a lot of squirrels, rabbits, gophers, or other wildlife, you’ll need to think about how best to keep them from raiding your garden. If you have any trees in your yard that birds perch in, remember that the area below the tree will have a lot of bird poop on it. That can be a good or bad thing, which is why you must think about it!

Step 4: Look at the Calendar

This may sound obvious, but before you go out and spend a bunch of time and money on this new project, think about the timing. If you’re like me, you always get inspired to start a garden in the fall, which is not always the best time to start a garden. If that’s you, then get everything together now and then wait till the right time to begin executing your plan. Giving yourself more time to prepare is a good thing.

On the other hand, if it’s early spring in your area and you get the gardening bug, you’ll need to consider what you can get done before it’s too late. We are blessed with a long growing season here in Arizona, but due to the extreme heat, the time for some plants is gone before you know it. Just ask the snow peas I tried planting one year at the end of May! A late start isn’t the end of the world, it just may mean that you need to shoot for a simpler goal for this year and leave the homesteading for next year when you’ve had more time to prepare.

Step 5: Buildout

Preparing your planting area is essential to success regardless of your goal. In no particular order, here is a (non-exhaustive) list of things you’ll need to do before you put your first seed in the ground:

  • Build or buy any containers or raised beds you plan to use
  • Test your soil (if planting in-ground) and amend, or fill your containers or raised beds with high-quality potting soil. If planting in large in-ground areas, you may need to rent a tilling machine, or till by hand
  • Install and test your irrigation system(s)
  • Remove obstructions and weed your garden area
  • Buy ancillary equipment like gloves, clippers, trowels, shovels, etc.
  • Install chicken wire, traps, or other animal deterrents as needed

Step 6: Execute

Everything is in place. You know your goal, you’ve done your homework on plant choice and layout, you’ve chosen the right spot for your garden, it’s the right time of year to plant, and you’ve got it ready as best as you can. Now is the time to execute! Plant your seeds or transplants, water them in, and keep a close eye on them. Inspect your irrigation system for problems, check the leaves of your plants for pests, and keep an eye out for friendly garden critters trying to steal your produce. When it’s time, harvest your plants and enjoy, or preserve them to enjoy in the future. Take your food scraps to your compost bin to prepare for next season. Savor your time in the garden, as you only get to do it so many times.

Step 7: Look Toward the Future

Your first season is not your last, so look towards the future. Take note of what worked and what didn’t. Change your goals, layout, and location as necessary to make next season better. Think about new plants you want to grow, new techniques you want to use, or new aspect you want to add to your goal. Winterize your irrigation system to make sure it’ll keep up the good work next season. For those pursuing expert goals like homesteading, don’t wait till the end to do some introspection about your gardening experience. You should always be thinking about what you did right, what you did wrong, and where you can improve.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

We get it. Starting a no-pressure garden just for fun is complicated enough. Adding in the expectation of getting your money’s worth out of the experience is a whole other level! While we aren’t experts at every aspect of gardening, we certainly are irrigation experts. No matter what type of garden you want to grow - from the simplest herb garden up to the crunchiest, most self-reliant homestead - we can ensure your plants get properly watered year after year. Our parts are competitively priced, simple to use, and last a long time. Plus, our customer service team is here to help answer your questions year-round. Call, email or schedule a consultation with one of our experts today!