Gardening Tips for Beginners: How Much Sunlight Do Vegetable Gardens Need? How Many Hours of Sun?

How Many Hours of Sun Do Vegetable Plants Need?

Subtitles Sub-topics:
Why Is Sunlight the Most Important Starting Point for Success in Growing Vegetable Garden Plants?
Why Put Your Vegetable Garden in the Sunniest Locations?
Why Vegetable Garden Plants Need So Much Direct Sunlight?
Why Start with Sunlight When Locating a Vegetable Garden?
How Much Direct Sunlight Do Most Vegetable Garden Plants Need?
What Vegetable Garden Plants Can I Successfully Grow in Six or Seven Hours of Direct Sunlight?
What Do Vegetable Plants Look like in Six or Seven Hours of Sunlight versus Nine, Ten, or Eleven or More Hours of Direct Sunlight?
How Do the Flowers, Seeds, and Fruit of Vegetable Plants That Get Seven Hours of Direct Sunlight Compare to Those That Get Nine or Ten Hours?

For more green thumb gardening secrets:
Check out my YouTube channel: ‪@greenthumbgardeningsecrets75‬

Check out my website: https://greenthumbgardeningsecrets.com

Follow me on Instagram:   / greenthumbgardeningsecrets  

Follow me on X:   / greenthumbgard3  

Links from video:
Finding Your Sunniest Spot: https://greenthumbgardeningsecrets.co...

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
00:47 - Why Do Vegetable Garden Plants Need So Much Direct Sunlight?
01:32 - Why Should I Start with Picking the Sunniest Spot When Placing a Gardening Bed? Why Put Your Vegetable Garden in the Sunniest Locations?
02:05 - How Do You Find Out if a Spot Gets Enough Sunlight (from resources on my website)?
02:13 - How Much Direct Sunlight Do Most Vegetable Garden Plants Need?
02:21 - What Vegetable Garden Plants Can I Successfully Grow in Six or Seven Hours of Direct Sunlight?
02:30 - What Do Vegetable Plants Look like in Six or Seven Hours of Sunlight versus Nine, Ten, or Eleven or More Hours of Direct Sunlight?
02:48 - What Vegetable Garden Plants Can I Successfully Grow in Six or Seven Hours of Direct Sunlight?
03:09 - How Do the Flowers, Seeds, and Fruit of Vegetable Plants That Get Seven Hours of Direct Sunlight Compare to Those That Get Nine or Ten Hours?
03:22 - Outro

**Partial Transcript**
Your first step in getting started with the actual tasks of gardening is to pick the right spot.

And, you want to pick the spot with the most direct sunlight you can because...

1. Our garden plants need it like we need food.
Plants might do alchemy with carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients, but it’s all powered by the sun.
2. And the vast majority of our garden plants evolved in open sunny environments so are hard-wired to require LOADS of direct sunlight
3. Plus, think of what we ask of them.
We don’t want tiny, tasteless tomatoes and paltry little broccoli heads. We want BIG, JUICY, super-flavorful EVERYTHING! Therefore, our plants need a ton of sun to power all of that size, sweetness, flavor, and nutrition.

Think about it: Is there another plant in our landscape that can start from a seed and grow a fruit the size of a tomato…an 8 or 9” ear filled with 100 plus super-energy-packed kernels, or a huge squash…in four months?
Is there a plant that could do that in the shade?—where flowers and seeds tend to be small just because the available energy is so much less?

The sun powers all of that growth, and we want the best of it! So give it to them!

4. Finally, the amount of direct sunlight a spot gets is often the hardest thing to change.

You can fix soil that’s low in nutrients, too dry, or even too wet. And you can easily change your planting times to change the temperatures in which your plants are growing.

But there’s usually nothing you can do to fix a spot that doesn’t get enough direct sunlight. Doing so often means removing houses and large trees that give you shade and shelter and might not even be yours…so, changing things that are not theoretically impossible but functionally so.

Choosing a spot that you eventually decide to abandon because it doesn’t get enough sunlight means a lot of wasted work, so it’s much easier to start with a spot that gets enough direct sunlight to start right away.

[How Do You Know If A Spot Gets Enough Direct Sunlight]

I show several ways to find out exactly how much direct sunlight a spot gets on my website. They’re all really easy, and I’ve included a link directly to them in the description below.

[How Much Sunlight Do Vegetable Plants Need?]

Keep in mind that, to be anywhere near their best, most common garden plants need 9 or 10 or more hours of pure, unfiltered, absolutely direct sunlight.

[What If You Can't Find a Spot That Gets Enough Sunlight for Your Plants?]

If you can’t find a spot anywhere that gets 9 or 10 or more hours, there are a few things you can still grow in a spot that gets down to 6 or 7 hours of direct sunlight a day, but I hesitate to tell you that because your plants won’t be at their best, possibly without you even realizing it. And if you do notice it, you might think it’s some mystical personal failing—like you magically just don’t have the mythical green thumb....