Maybe you live in the city but have always had green fingers. Maybe you have a modest patch of earth in your back yard that you want to make into a productive garden. Perhaps you even have read a post or two about organically produced vegetables and want to try growing them yourself.

No matter the reasoning for growing your own vegetables, you’re at the point where you are planning to jump into gardening in some manner. Before you do so, there are a number of considerations you need to look at to make sure that your experience is enjoyable and worthwhile.

The first, and possibly simplest, question that you should consider is exactly what kind of garden do you want to have? Still writing strictly about vegetable gardens, there are a number of types of them depending on the space you have available plus your lifestyle.

Maybe you are interested just in herbs or smaller plants? They could easily be kept in a container garden using flower pots. Plus container gardens have the added benefit of being able to be brought into the house when the weather gets too chilly outdoors. There’s no need even for transplanting!

If you are considering more of a ‘regular’ style of garden, the ground will need to be prepared and reguraly hoed before you plant. The soil will need to be tested as well to create the most effective marriage of soil variety to what’s being grown. With a big enough garden, there is the potential of harvesting enough vegetables to eat throughout the growing season and store/pickle/can what’s left for the off-season.

Lastly, an improvement to the idea of the ‘regular’ garden is a raised garden. At its simplest, raised garden beds resemble sandboxes with fruit and vegetables growing out of them. These enclosures have a large number of benefits over ‘regular’ bed gardening. The earth itself heats up more rapidly at the start of the growing season and the structure of the enclosure itself assists with drainage. There is also the added return of not having to bend or stoop quite as much when working in your garden, which anyone with lower back pain can easily identify with.

After research into the type of garden, another question to ask yourself is why. Exactly why do you want to get into growing plants? Is it for one of the reasons that was described at the start of the article, or possibly another more personal one.

Gardens can provide a plethora of fruit and vegetables that are unique to individual tastes. For those who absolutely adore pumpkins, for example, turn part of your back yard into a pumpkin patch. And honestly, the texture and flavour of freshly grown produce picked at almost the moment that they ripen can’t be surpassed.

Once bitten by the gardening bug – no pun intended – you’ll find that you lean towards organic gardening to produce vegetables and fruits that are free of pesticides. Or you might find that your soil is particularly suited to one sort of vegetation or another; for example, blueberries normally thrive in soil that has an acid pH level.

When you make the choice that this is a hobby that you’d like to follow, the possibilities are endless, subject only to your imagination. Each year gives a new blank slate of options that you can work with. If something doesn’t work particularly effectively, don’t try it again next year. If you enjoy something and you don’t mind the extra effort involved with care and maintenance, you can plant twice.

The choice is up to you.