It’s never too early to start thinking about your new garden. Even before the ground begins to thaw and become workable you can start planning your vegetable garden. While you’re waiting for the snow to melt, order some catalogs from different seed companies like Burpee. Look through them and read about the different vegetables and get an idea of which plants you might want. Here are some tips to starting your vegetable garden.

• Find an area in your yard that you want to use. An area that I use is along my north fence, which gives me a lot of sun and especially the south and west sun. This area is about 25’ long and about 12’ wide. All kinds of sizes will work. If you have a small area, you can still have a fine small area garden or a container garden.

• If the area needs weeding, you can dig the weeds, use a hoe or you can rototill the area, weeds and all. If the area you want to use is grass, you can rototill it until there is just dirt, that works great since the grass then becomes nutrients for the soil.

• You can learn how to make your own compost. If you have some compost ready use that, if not you can buy some organic compost and mix it in during the digging or rototilling of your area.

• Go back to your seed catalog and pick out what vegetables you will want in the garden paying attention to how big these plants get and the spacing they will need. We all have just so much room for a garden and we want to make the most of the space. Winter squash takes up a lot of room, but it can also be trained in and among the other plants. Some vegetables can grow upward along a fence. When planning your garden you don’t want some of the larger plants to cast too much of a shadow on the smaller plants. Get out some paper and draw out your basic plan for your garden. Remember you need to leave some space to walk, weed, water and pick. Some years it seems you spaced the plants out too much and other years you didn’t space enough.

• Tip: Make sure when planning your garden, that you only plant the vegetables everyone will eat. With a first garden, people have a tendency to go crazy with plants. And since there are so many types of tomatoes, pick ones you know about and maybe try a new one a year, the beefsteaks, cherry and Roma for sauces are the most popular.

• As for the plants themselves, you can buy seeds and start them yourself and or you can go to the garden shop and buy the plants. I have started green beans, tomatoes, squash and more by seed and it works fine. You can read this to learn how to start plants from seed.

• If you have started some plants in your house by seed, you need to “harden them off” before planting them. Don’t let them sit in the direct sun too long as these new plants will dry out very fast. Even when you buy plants from the garden shop, don’t let them sit in their pots in direct sun too long without watering them, they also will dry out very fast. See the above link.

• As soon as the dirt and weather is warm enough you can start planting. Where I live, we don’t plant outside until after Mothers day. Look at the bottom of this page for a planting zone maps. If you want to plant early or if after you plant there is a cold spell, you can cover the plants as you would in the fall or use a product called Wall-O-Water that will help the plants through the colder spring nights.

• Once the weather is staying warm enough, go ahead and plant everything in the garden including seeds for vegetables like carrots and radishes. Follow the directions on the seed package or the tag on the plants for the right spacing and depth. You don’t want to bury the seeds. Plants should be planted above the dirt ball that the roots are in and in fact tomatoes even above the first couple lines of leaves (depending on the size of the plant).

• When planting plants from the garden shop, break up the dirt around the roots, this will help the plants get established in your soil.

• Tip: In the holes you dig for seeds and the plants, I put some compost in the hole and also some Miracle-Gro, just mix it according to instructions, you don’t want to burn the roots or seeds with fertilizer, but it could get them off to a strong start.

• Tip: Some plants are helpful in the garden because they are good at pest control. I have always planted marigolds in the garden randomly along and in through the vegetables for bug control, and they look nice as well.

• Get your tomato cages ready before the tomato plants get too big. Put them on fairly soon. You can buy the metal cages or you can use bamboo poles and some “green garden tape” or multi purpose plant tape to make your own cages, this stuff stretches as well and can be used to stake many types of plants.

• Watering. When the garden is new, don’t flood the area or you’ll wash away the seeds and by mid summer you’ll have carrots growing all over the place. As the plants get bigger one rule of thumb is to water in the morning when it’s still cool out. Also watering in the evening or after dark can cause some types of disease from the plants being wet overnight. A soaker hose is best for watering gardens since watering the roots is recommended.

• USA hardness growing zone map
• USA by state hardness growing zone map
• Tips about planting early with Wall-O-Water