Vegetable gardening has become a popular hobby for many people throughout the world. Vegetable gardening is a simple way to grow your own healthy vegetables at home or in a large scale vegetable garden. Vegetable gardening is not just for people who like to eat fresh vegetables but also for those who enjoy the aesthetic appeal of being outside in their garden. Growing vegetables is a pleasurable pastime and one that can easily be taken up as a full time hobby or simply as an enjoyable recreational activity. Vegetable gardening is a great way to save money at the grocery store, is easy to take care of and usually just requires your time. Below are a few ideas on how to get started with vegetable gardening.
In the early stages of vegetable gardening it was fairly easy to tell what a plant was made of because all that you usually found were the main stem and leaves. Vegetables were only considered vegetables if the main stems and leaves looked like a vegetable. This is still the case in the 15th century. Today, most fruits and vegetables are fairly clear cut and there is no need to make any special distinction on the vegetable plant as to whether it should be eaten raw or cooked. The meaning of vegetable is more directly associated with the word fruits.
Throughout history, most vegetable plants were simply called fruits, except for potatoes, which were technically a root, but we will not discuss them in this article. Over time the boundaries between fruits and vegetables began to blur more until what we know today as vegetables began to be grouped along with other fruits such as apples, pears, peaches and plums into more specific categories. Early vegetable gardens often included lettuce, beans, carrots, potatoes, and corn. These varieties were generally included along with squash, potatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers and bell peppers.
With the exception of peas, squash and corn most other types of early vegetables were not considered vegetables at all and were more like weeds or plants that should be killed. Commonly growing plants like these included shallots, potatoes, onions, leeks and garlic. This group of crops has expanded since the early days of farming with the addition of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, corn and many other types of crop grown vegetables.
Modern vegetable gardens tend to have a much greater diversity of crops. Lettuces, for example, are a legume while strawberries are a fruit. Modern vegetable gardens can also include alfalfa, clover, sunflowers, Swiss chard, cabbages, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, garlic, rutabaga, cabbage and lettuce. Modern vegetable gardens can also use natural micro-organisms to help feed the plants and keep them growing. The most popular garden micro-organisms used are manure, compost, earthworms, beneficial microbes and aerobic bacteria.
A natural vegetable by itself is not a vegetable; it is considered as a seed or a root of a larger plant. It is important to remember that an edible part of a plant is the edible part of the leaves and stems and not the entire plant. Just like a fruit, each vegetable part, whether it is a vegetable or fruit, consists of a single cell. The vegetable parts are present in the leaves, stem, bark, rhizome and fruit of the plant. Each cell holds one taste and color and are not responsible for the taste or the color of the entire vegetable.