Start a Vegetable Garden

When you want to start a vegetable garden, you need to find an area where the ground will have good drainage, good soil, and lots of sunlight. First you need to work up the soil, either with a garden plow or by spading it up yourself. The soil works up best if it has been spaded or plowed in the fall, as the cold and moisture break up the soil and leaves it mallow and easily worked in the spring.

Next you want to decide what you are growing in your garden, and that will depend upon the size of the area you will be planting. If it is a small area, you need to stick to bush type plants. But if you have a large area, you can seed plants that vine out a lot. The climate in your area also determines, to some extent, what you plant. Also, many plants can be seeded earlier than others.

Lettuce, radishes, carrots, peas, and potatoes can be planted as soon as the ground is warm enough. These are all planted from seeds and you do not want to plant them too deep. Carrot seed is very tiny and you must only slightly cover them. You will probably have to thin them out after they come up; as it is almost impossible to plant them thin enough by hand. Lettuce and radish seeds should be covered by 1/4 to 1/2 in. of soil. And peas covered by 1 in. of soil. The old adage is that you must plant potatoes on Good Friday to get a good crop. Potatoes are planted from seed potatoes. The seed potatoes need to be cut into pieces, with each piece containing at least two eyes. If there is no eye in the potato piece, it will not grow. Plant with the eye of the potato pointing up and plant them about 2 in. deep. Your next group of plants to grow is tomatoes, cabbage, pickles, peppers, green beans. Pickles and green beans are grown from seed, and tomatoes, cabbage and peppers are grown from plants you can buy in a nursery. Pickles is a vining plant, but you can buy bush pickle plants that don't take as much room.

After planting your seeds or plants, you need to give them a good watering and once them come up it helps to use fertilizer, such as MiracleGro, on them. If it gets dry in your area, you may need to water your garden from time to time.