A new vegetable garden in 8 easy steps

Everything you need to know to start a vegetable garden.

So you'd like to follow Michelle Obama's lead and start your own vegetable garden?

With just a little planning, having a kitchen garden can be rewarding and fun, especially for people new to the hobby. Here is a commonsense, eight-step strategy that can help get you growing:

1. Start by involving the entire family and deciding what it is you want to eat. What veggies are your favorites? Which would be easiest to grow?

"You can dream all you want about olives and figs, but if you live in northern Minnesota, it's not going to happen. But that's OK. The reality is you can grow a variety of things, no matter where you live," says Roger Doiron, a home garden advocate involved in the campaign to convert a small patch of the White House's South Lawn into an organic vegetable garden.

The first lady helped break ground for the garden last week. It's believed to be the first cultivated at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden during World War II. Produce harvested from the garden will be used for family meals, state dinners, and a Washington soup kitchen.

The garden also will be used to teach children about healthier, homegrown foods at a time when obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. About one-third of the nation's children and teens are dangerously overweight, government officials say.

2. Buy the necessary tools and seeds, pots and compost, and plants.
Some supplies are remarkably cheap. A package of summer squash seeds, for instance, runs about $2.50. A nine-pack of cabbage seedlings? Around $3.50. Onion sets, 100 to the package, have been seen priced at $2.99.

3. Determine the best time to get your plants into the ground.
Find out when the threat of the last killing frost is supposed to have passed. Familiarize yourself with how long it will take to transform seeds to table fare. You can turn to fellow gardeners or check with your county extension agent about the best crops and varieties to grow, and when it's best to grow them in your area.

4. Sketch a layout of your ideal garden plot.Start small, especially your first time out. You always can enlarge the garden or plant succession crops, which are follow-up vegetables that will mature before season's end.

5. Garden location is as important as size. Do your growing in a place that gets a full day's sun or, at minimum, six hours. It also should be sheltered from the wind and within reach of your kitchen door.

6. Buy some starter soil and spread it liberally over the growing area, at least nine inches deep for vegetables.

Gardens can be cultivated on bare ground, in raised beds, or in containers. Look for commercially bagged soils containing a slow-release fertilizer.

If it's organic production you want, then spread generous quantities of mulch over the topsoil. "Mulch serves many purposes in the garden, including keeping weeds down, reducing your water bill and adding fertility to the soil as it decomposes," Mr. Doiron says.

7. Read the directions carefully on seed packets or seedlings about how closely plants should be spaced. Leaf lettuce can withstand some crowding. Tomatoes need a couple of feet between the plants. Pumpkins require about 4 feet.

Grow your plants upward on trellises or some other kind of support if you don't have enough elbowroom to garden laterally.

Starting with seeds is the cheapest way to garden and can give you the greatest plant variety. Many seeds, though, require transplanting and take longer to mature. Seedlings or young plants are less demanding.

Salad greens, summer squash, onions, sweet peppers, carrots, radishes, zucchini, peas, green beans, and tomatoes — particularly cherry tomatoes — are among the easiest vegetables to grow. That makes them great confidence builders for budding gardeners.

8. Keep detailed records so you can duplicate your successes and avoid your failures next planting season.

"If you are interested in doing something more ambitious, try working some flowers, vegetables, fruits and herbs into your garden plan," Doiron says. "It not only will look nicer and give you a wider selection of things to eat, but it will help make your garden less vulnerable to pests and disease."

For more information about starting a vegetable garden, click here for vegetable gardening basics from the University of Illinois Extension Service.

Editor's Note: We invite you to click here to visit the Monitor's gardening site, which offers articles, essays, and blog posts on a variety of gardening topics.