Maximizing Fruit and Vegetable Success: Lessons from Our Vego Garden Journey

3 min read·February 28, 2024

We feel fortunate that we found Vego Garden before losing interest in our sustainable grow our own fruit and vegetable goals. We now have a total of 37, however we started out with 6 which are conveniently located immediately west of our pond. The pond helps with several needs, it allows increased sunlight here in New England which is quite hilly. Additionally as it is full of fish it is a convenient water source, lastly it helps extend the growing season on both ends slightly as it is an immense thermal mass.

garden bed

The pond is spring fed and packed with at least 13 types of fish. Other than rain, it's our only source of water. We pump water each day into a 250-gallon water tank and then use the water for the beds. Plan ahead for your water source as you are designing your garden, make sure you can deliver adequate water to all of your plants, and make sure you have a water source and hoses which can meet this need. We are slowly moving to drip irrigation, and Vego has some great products to get you started. Taking the time on the front end to get your soil mix right will go a long way in helping you to maintain the right moisture level in the beds.

There are countless ways to fill your beds. For the first year, we started with native topsoil and amended it with, screened sand to keep it loose, vermiculite and peat moss to hold moisture, and lastly a couple tablespoons of bone meal for calcium when transplanting potted plants that we start as seed hydroponically.

This year we have taken a little different approach to filling the beds with soil. We had clean screened sand, topsoil and aged compost delivered from a local farm. This accomplished a couple of things, first we know what we have and where it came from, and next it helps to support the local community which is one of our goals. Vego Garden raised beds are all about growing locally. After years of working corporate jobs, it is great to be a small part of the food to table movement.

This year we added two Vego worm composters into two of the tall 4" X 8" beds and are interested in seeing how it works out. We pre-charged the composters with year old compost, grass clippings and leaves (50/50 mix of brown and green) as well as a good handful of local earthworms. We also are adding several different minerals to the beds to help match the pH of the soil with the needs of the plant. Blueberries for one thrive once you get the pH dialed into what they like. Lastly, we have been buying ladybugs online to help control pests like cucumber beetles, they do a good job and keep the extra chemicals out of the garden and therefore ourselves. Don’t forget to plant a variety of flowers to help attract plenty of bees which is key to pollination and increasing your bounty.

We have learned a lot in the past 5 years and admittedly can learn a lot more. That’s a big part of the enjoyment.. We started out with container gardens. Our experience each year was that they started out great, looked good through June, stalled in July and perished in August. When we converted to Vego Garden raised beds, the plants took off as soon as they found their forever home in the beds and never looked back. Friends and neighbors are amazed at the production we get per square foot. (Full disclosure, I need to share that for the past three years we have been pruning and wintering our many varieties of pepper and then putting them back in their beds in the Spring. The plants can live up to 5 years if you winter them correctly. We have been picking peppers since the last week in July, albeit their production greatly increases as we move to July. A good practice is to thoughtfully rotate the plants in your bed, just as you would do f you were farming 10 acres. I hope sharing this little bit of our experience helps.

Kevin McBrien

Kim and I share the gardening duties, it's great to have a partner. She has taken on the task of researching the best seeds and plant varieties for our gardening zone and selecting the type and variety of plants that we want to grow. To start, she germinates the seeds hydroponically, which gives them robust roots and healthy leaves before moving them to pots. After a brief time, she moves them to their forever homes in the raised beds. This helps them to grow into healthy, disease-free, and insect-free plants. In her corporate life she spent years designing large databases for international companies, so the organization gene is in her DNA. Although we both share the day-to-day garden duties like weeding and watering, I tend to gravitate building and expanding, when possible, on our original design whenever I get the chance. The Vego gardens are the base of our garden and after initial set-up require little maintenance. Vego raised beds were the perfect Covid project for us and allowed us to join the “grow locally” community. The census for the US in the early 1900’s showed over 80% of the population participated in some way with agrarian jobs, and it is good to see lots of families getting back to their roots. Growing your own food is not only a green solution, it saves fuel needed to move crops to market, it also provides you and your family with the opportunity to experience fruit and vegetable varieties not typically available in big box stores. The most important thing is to have fun. Eating food, you have grown yourself is a rewarding and a wonderful experience for children to learn the value of hard work. At the end of the season last year, we added 60 dwarf fruit trees and are on a steep learning curve on how to best take care of them. This year we have lots of small apples growing, however, it looks like we will have to wait another year for the pear, peach, and apricot trees to catch up. To date, our gardens have been pesticide free, and we are using natural pest control and compost in lieu of fertilizers. We bought lady bugs on-line and released them as a natural form of pest control. We are waiting to see how they work out. We also use Neem oil to control unwanted insects. Most recently we added some fence covers to our beds to protect the new strawberry plants from local animals. The deer were enjoying the crop a little too much. So far, the protective panels have saved the plants from being nibbled on. We understand the animals are part of the natural ecosystem and we have started to plant things they enjoy eating more than sampling from the raised beds. So far it is working. In closing, anyone can do what we have done. Once we found the raised beds, we had the time to focus on the “what we want to do”, as the “how we were doing it” was taken care of. Whether you install one raised bed or ten, plant vegetables, flowers, berries or bushes, try it out, you will be rewarded.