Fertilizing

1. You can use both chemical fertilizers and organic fertilizers.
2. Chemical fertilizer is cheaper and takes effect very soon, but the effect can’t last for a long time. And it is easy to hurt the plants if fertilize too much. Especially, you can’t leave the fertilizer on the leaves of the plants, or the leaves will get hurt easily.
3. The effect of organic fertilizer is long lasting and it may not injure the plants. You can mix the organic fertilizers with the soil when you are turning over the soil before planting.
4. You can use homemade compost, it is economical and it can also improve the quality of the soil.

Weeding

1. It is easy to have weeds in vegetable garden. We should pull out the weeds so that they won’t take away the nutrients from vegetables.
2. Pay attention to the weeds which has mature seeds when you are weeding. Don’t let these seeds fall in the garden again if possible. And please don’t use these weeds with seeds to make compost.

Plant diseases and pests

1. Choose the types of vegetables and planting time seriously, so that it can reduce using pesticides.
2. It is suitable to plant crown daisy, mustard in September and October, because the weather is very good, and don’t need to spray pesticides.
3. It is easily to have a lot of aphids and caterpillars during December to February, especially the Chinese cabbage, mustard, pakchoi cabbage, cabbage and etc.
4. Some vegetables are innately not easy to suffer pests, such as crown daisy, lettuce, water spinach which contain white milky juice.
5. If you have enough time, and the quantity of vegetables is not so large, you can catch the caterpillars by hands. You can often see the caterpillars eating vegetables in the early morning.
6. In case that you have to use pesticides, you’d better go to the pesticide shop to ask clearly the dosage and the usage. Pay attention to the measures of spraying pesticides and safe interval period after spraying.
7. Not all the plants diseases and pests are caused by the caterpillars; some of them are caused by bacteria. If you meet the situation above, you can pick out the leaves which have been suffering pests to ask the professional pesticide shop (some peasant associations have attached pesticide shops). Moreover, pull out and insulate the sick plants, don’t use them to make compost.

Harvest

1. We usually cut vegetables in the place between their roots and leaves by knife. Don’t cut them too far away from the roots, or the leaves will fall off, but also don’t keep too much roots, so that we don’t need to cut them again before cooking.
2. Pull out all the roots in the soil after harvest, turn over the soil, and let it in the sun for a few days, which is good for next sowing.
3. Some vegetables can harvest many times, such as sweet potato leaves, asparagus, and basil. Remember not to pull out all their roots after first harvest.