Crunchy, colourful and gloriously flavourful - fresh vegetables lend an edge to soups, salads, pastas and other dishes. Therefore, the prospect of having delicious sun-ripened tomatoes, beans, spinach and succulent pumpkins in your backyard, is exciting.
There are numerous other benefits: your diet will be healthier as you will incorporate more of the vegetables you grow into your meals. You can also have more seasonal vegetables in your kitchen and get the family outdoors and involved in the activity.
Setting up a vegetable garden in your yard is not a difficult proposition as long as you have the space, sunlight and adequate water. However, you can't help but wonder if vegetable gardening is a challenge in a place such as the UAE due to limitations such as scarce rainfall and sandy soil.
Edyne Thomas, Project Manager, Dubai Garden Centre, says, "Vegetable gardening has - since the time we opted for agriculture over hunting or gathering - been dependant on irrigation. Watering a vegetable garden whether here or in England, would still be a necessity regardless of whether this is a desert or a tropical island.
Sand and sunlight are both ingredients for the successful growing of vegetables, so neither of these would be negative stimuli either. However, heat does affect plants so summers here would influence what you can plant.
Other factors that play an important role include the availability of different vegetable seeds and the ability of vegetable plants to thrive here. Thomas says that people who want to grow vegetables (including seasonal ones and herbs) can find most vegetables in seed form in the UAE.
"However, the things you should consider when selecting vegetable seeds to grow should include: whether you would want to eat that particular vegetable or herb, how big it will grow to before it can be harvested and whether it is a trailing plant (pumpkin or squash), climbing plant (bean or pea), underground plant (beet root or carrot) or shrub (tomato or spinach).
"It's important to note that these plants are seasonal and are normally heavily influenced by ambient temperatures. Good seed companies will include this information on the seed packets as an indication to when it can be planted," he says.
Preparing the soil is an important step in growing vegetables. According to Thomas, most vegetables thrive in a compost-rich, well-drained soil in full sun.
He recommends adding sufficient amounts of phosphate-rich fertiliser for root vegetables to stimulate root development.
"Leafy vegetables would need nitrogen-rich fertilisers and fruiting vegetables will need to be supplemented with potassium. I also find that it helps root vegetables grow uniformly and in an even shape when I plant them in a raised furrow of un-compacted soil," he says.
Garden equipment can help at different stages during the gardening process. Gardening tools are readily available in garden and hardware stores. "You would require a spade, garden fork, rake and trowel. Some people feel that a hoe is indispensable, as it saves on so much laborious work," says Thomas.
A dilemma that most potential gardeners face is whether to start with seeds or seedlings. Thomas says that sowing seeds is fun (especially for children) and much cheaper. For instance, you can get up to 50 seeds (depending on the type of vegetable seed you purchase) for Dh4-7.
"Seedlings, on the other hand, are not always available in the varieties that can be found on the seed shelf. But if you don't have the time and the seedlings are available, then you will be able to harvest your vegetables far sooner from seedlings," he says.
Protecting your plants from pests also needs to be a priority for gardeners. There's a contingent of pesticides available here in the UAE to counter almost any insect pest that may want to destroy a veggie patch, says Thomas.
"I am, however, reticent of using pesticides on things that I want to later consume. Take care to follow the manufacturers' safety precautions when applying these poisons. There are some (very effective) organic pesticides available on the market also, so keep an eye out for these safer options," he says.
And finally, maintenance can be the difference between a good garden and a great one. "Good garden husbandry is probably the best advice I can give. A neat and clean garden is easier to maintain and makes it easier to detect when things start to go wrong," says Thomas.
He recommends crop rotation, which involves planting a different crop in the same bed each season.
"Doing this maintains a balanced soil and does not eventually leave you with soil that is denuded and impoverished. Different plants also require different elements from the soil as well as imparting other chemicals that a different crop would later need," he says.
Thomas also recommends companion planting, which is a concept of planting mixed beds of vegetables and flowering plants, whereby the different plants afford protection to their companions against insect/fungal pests as well as soil born nematodes.
