One of the most challenging aspects of vegetable gardening is trying to figure out when to plant each type of crop. Some vegetables are cold tolerant and can be planted as soon as the soil thaws in early spring. Others are frost-sensitive and can’t be moved to the garden until the risk of frost has passed. To keep it simple, I use the last expected frost date as my guide to schedule spring planting, a trick that works no matter where you live.

Keep your last frost date in mind

Even Southern gardeners, like Joe Lamp’l, the Atlanta-based host of Growing a Greener World, uses the last frost to time planting. His is March 15. “The frost date is our recommended guideline here,” says Joe, but adds that with climate change he’s finding that date is more flexible and he has been pushing the boundaries of planting. “I usually start planting outdoors two weeks earlier than traditional recommendations and have provisional plans ready in case I need to cover my crops with a frost blanket.” (He hasn’t needed this backup plan in years.)

Protect early seedlings

Similarly, in my Nova Scotia garden with a last expected frost date of May 8, I use row covers and frost blankets if the temperature drops below freezing unexpectedly. These lightweight covers can be tossed over newly seeded beds or just-planted seedlings. You can also turn empty milk or water jugs into protective cloches by removing the bottom and placing them over young seedlings.

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Make a schedule for planting vegetables

As you’re planning your spring plantings, stay organized by making a list of the vegetables you wish to grow. Jot down their approximate seeding date, for indoor or outdoor sowing, or when to transplant. I add planting information to my online calendar so reminders pop up on my phone. The chart below is based on the last expected spring frost date and tells you when you’re usually safe to start each plant outdoors. If you’re not sure of the frost date, contact your local extension office or visit the Almanac website.

Determine when to plant vegetables based on your last frost date

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Does garlic grow well in Minnesota?

Yes, you can grow garlic in your northern garden, and choosing the right one for your region will help ensure a successful harvest. Garlic is a versatile crop with two main types: hardneck and softneck. Each variety has specific characteristics that make it better suited to particular climates, and understanding these differences is key to a thriving garlic crop.

Softneck vs. hardneck garlic

Hardneck Garlic

Hardneck garlic produces a flowering stalk, or "scape," in early summer, with a single row of large cloves around the central stalk beneath the soil. Although it has fewer cloves per bulb than softneck garlic, many find its flavor more intense. Hardneck varieties are typically more winter-hardy, making them ideal for short-season gardens. After harvesting and curing, they store for up to six months.

Softneck Garlic

Softneck garlic, often grown in milder regions, isn’t as winter-hardy as hardneck types. It produces bulbs packed with numerous cloves (sometimes over 20), ranging from small to large. Without a central stalk, softneck garlic has flexible stems, which can be braided for drying. It stores exceptionally well, staying firm and flavorful for up to a year.

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Why not to plant store-bought garlic

While it might be tempting to plant garlic cloves from the grocery store, this is generally not recommended. Many commercially sold garlic bulbs are treated with chemicals to inhibit sprouting and prolong shelf life. This makes it unsuitable for planting in the garden since treated cloves may not sprout well — or at all. Additionally, store-bought garlic is typically softneck, which may not thrive in colder climates where hardneck varieties are better suited. Buy garlic cloves for planting at your local garden center, through a mail order source or from a local grower.

Planting tips

Hardneck varieties should be planted in fall in a spot with well-drained soil and full sun. Break the heads into individual cloves just before you plant, leaving the papery covering on each one. Set the cloves, pointed end up, roughly 5 inches apart and 2 to 4 inches deep. Cloves will spend their energy in winter growing roots, and foliage will appear in spring.

Garlic growing tips

Garlic has shallow roots and does not tolerate competition. Keeping the area weed-free ensures the garlic has access to the nutrients it needs to grow strong and healthy. In spring, apply an inch or two of straw mulch helps keep the soil moisture consistent and suppresses weed growth. Give them an inch of water per week during the growing season and snap off the edible curly scapes (the flower stalks on hardneck garlic) when they appear. This helps direct the plant’s energy into growing larger bulbs rather than producing flowers and seeds. As the foliage begins to brown in summer, the heads are ready to harvest.

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When I first started vegetable gardening, I was caught up in the process of seeing tiny seeds transform into flourishing plants. It was impossible not to feel a sense of wonder as I watched my garden produce a vibrant tapestry of fruit in shades of green, yellow and red. I waited eagerly for any sign of ripeness but sometimes harvested too early or too late, leading to less flavorful produce or, worse, waste. I wish I’d had a handy chart like the one below back then! Once you know how to recognize each crop’s subtle cues, you can pick at the perfect time to capture peak flavor and nutrition.

Learn how to pick produce at the best time

The perfect harvest window varies plant by plant. For example, root vegetables like carrots can remain in place without going past peak ripeness for a lot longer than green beans, which you probably need to check every day or two. And if you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know this all too well. I swear, they can grow a foot overnight!

Learning the signs of ripeness

Here, you’ll find the expected days to maturity if you’re starting from seeds, along with the telltale signs that indicate when your crop is under- or overripe. Whether you’re a beginner gardener wondering about the best time to harvest or an experienced one looking to refine your timing, this guide can help ensure that every vegetable you grow tastes its best. Happy harvesting! 

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Helpful vegetable harvesting guide

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4 ways to get the most out of your vegetable garden

One of Meg Cowden’s goals is to harvest something to eat from her Minnesota garden for as many weeks as possible each year. She thinks of it like many of us do our flower gardens, where the goal is multi-season interest. Meg focuses on growing the right amount of food for her family through succession planting strategies like repeatedly sowing crops, staggering maturity and rotating crops throughout the seasons. She also uses these techniques to keep peak harvests less overwhelming. The goal is to have enough for fresh eating, sharing with friends and donating, and to keep up with canning, freezing and drying.

Meg shares lots of helpful garden tips in her book “Plant, Grow, Harvest, Repeat.” Here are a few that’ll help you stretch out your harvests for months.

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1. Start your vegetable garden early

A typical growing season in zone 4 Minnesota starts in May, but Meg likes to start planting in April. The secret to this early start lies in work that she does months earlier: When she’s cleaning up the garden and spreading compost on her beds in fall, she also chooses a couple of beds and sets up PVC hoop frames over them. In February she fastens the greenhouse poly material in the photo above over the frames. Even when temperatures are still below 20 degrees and there’s snow on the ground, she says that in two weeks, the soil is thawed, and by mid-April, the soil is warm enough for bok choy, broccoli, cabbage and kohlrabi. Later, she warms up the soil for her tomatoes and peppers with tunnels so she can get an earlier start there too. She leaves those tunnels up until after the risk of frost has passed.

2. Succession planting

So you’re not overwhelmed by more produce than you can eat, sow several small plantings of the same crop, known as succession planting, so you can harvest enough for a few meals at a time. Meg plants three rows of sweet corn every three weeks from early May to early July. You can also do this with carrots, beets, cilantro, lettuce and cabbage.

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3. Grow plants with staggered maturity

Growing the same plants with different maturity dates is another way to prevent overwhelming harvests in the garden. Meg does this with cabbage, planting an early season ‘Tiara’, midseason ‘Famosa’ and late-season ‘Integro’ at the same time. She says you can play with type and timing for the ultimate succession planting of tomatoes: Cherries typically ripen first, salad tomatoes and smaller slicers mature next, and larger beef steaks are harvested last.

She staggers when she starts different types of tomatoes indoors, which in turn, affects when they are ready to plant in the garden. This helps her stretch the harvest over a couple of months starting in early summer instead of being overwhelmed all at once in late summer.

4. Know when to pull the plant

I will admit, I am one of those gardeners who keeps my crops long after they have produced more than I could ever need. But why not just pull the plant and replace it with something new? Meg does this with her pickling cucumbers: After she has pickled enough jars for her family, she removes the plant, making room for a fall crop of radish, arugula, spinach, cilantro, kohlrabi or lettuce.

The early beds she covered in February get four or five succession plantings every season. However, not all crops are good candidates for this method. Tomatoes, peppers and other members of the nightshade family are especially susceptible to soil-borne diseases. To help minimize exposure, she moves them around the garden from year to year and doesn’t grow other plants in their beds in the same year.

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Tomato Plant Problems

Even though my first tomato plant only yielded four tomatoes, I was hooked and determined to do better the next year. Since then, I’ve had a lot more successful harvests, but also made plenty of mistakes over the years. If you’ve ever been disappointed in your vegetable garden crops, fixing a few simple techniques could make all the difference! Here are some of the things I wish I’d known sooner.

1. Tilling your vegetable garden every year

Did you know that when you till the garden every year, you disrupt beneficial micro-ecosystems that help keep your garden healthy and free of diseases and pests? It also damages soil structure, which can lead to compacted soil that makes it harder for roots to absorb oxygen and water.

Try no-till practices

When you’re establishing a new vegetable garden, you might want to till in amendments like compost or manure to get it started. But after that, only digging the holes and rows for the plants or seeds is better for the soil. Try top dressing with mulch or compost every year to continue to add organic matter and improve soil fertility and structure. This helps create healthy garden beds that are ready to be planted in at the beginning of every season without much work on your part. Consider making permanent walkways and paths through the garden to prevent compaction from foot traffic.

2. Not amending garden soil

Not only can skipping soil amendments cause spindly plants and yellowing leaves, but it can also decrease your harvest. The good news is that this is totally fixable!

Test your vegetable garden soil and add nutrients

Soil testing is a great place to get started and it helps you figure out what type of soil you have and which vital nutrients may be missing. This way you can tailor your amendments to your plants’ needs. Adding compost or manure to the top layer of soil can give your garden the boost it needs. Apply soil amendments at the beginning and end of the growing season so that nutrients will begin leaching into the soil and feeding your plants as soon as you begin watering.

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3. Not planting your vegetable garden in enough sunlight

Ever wonder why you only got a few tomatoes off of one plant instead of the bushel baskets you were dreaming of? Maybe you made the same mistake I did in my first year and planted them in too much shade.

Do a site analysis

To find the best spot in your yard, keep track of the amount of sun hitting different spots in your garden at different times throughout the day. Most vegetables need 6 to 8 hours of strong sun each day to produce their best. A few, such as Brussels sprouts, cabbage, pole beans and root vegetables, can get by with only 4 to 6 hours of sun.

Also, be sure that your tall plants aren’t accidentally casting shade on shorter ones. When you plan your rows, maximize the sun hitting everything by running rows east to west and the tallest plants to the north and shortest to the south, as shown in the illustration above. This ensures that the corn or tall tomatoes won’t shade out the smaller peppers nearby for part of the day.

4. Not thinning seedlings

It’s hard to make yourself thin perfectly healthy seedlings. And it’s also difficult to imagine in May that the little tomato you’re putting in the ground will turn into a sprawling monster by August. But that definitely happens. Plants need room to grow or they won’t produce as well (or they might just crowd out their neighbors!).

Be sure to read seed packets and plant tags for important growing information

Most seed packets recommend sowing seeds thickly in the garden, then thinning the seedlings to give them room to grow once they’ve germinated. Don’t skip this step — leaving them crowded will just stunt every seedling’s growth. And instead of planting according to the size the plants are when you bring them home from the store, read tags to learn what the mature size will be and plant them spaced far enough apart to accommodate this. Research the sizes and plan before you go to the garden center in spring and you can avoid bringing home too many plants and trying to cram them all in.

5. Skipping mulch in the vegetable garden

If I don’t get around to mulching, I always regret it midway through the summer. Without mulch, a garden needs more water, is more susceptible to heat and has more weeds.

Mulch your garden in spring

Add an inch or two of mulch on top of the soil after you have finished planting your vegetable garden. Just make sure you don’t cover up any seedlings that will need light to emerge. Wheat or oat straw and chemical-free grass clippings are the best options for mulching vegetable gardens. Budget-friendly grass clippings and straw break down in the soil relatively quickly, adding an extra layer of organic matter. Be careful not to use too thick a coating of grass clippings at a time as they can hold moisture that invites mold and decay, which can create a smelly situation.

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6. Letting weeds take over your vegetable garden

We’ve all been there: The garden gets a little wild, and weeding becomes an overwhelming task. Weeds compete with vegetables for nutrients, light and water and some even attract pests and diseases.

Control the weeds

In addition to mulching, putting down landscape fabric also helps prevent weeds from emerging without blocking air and moisture to the soil. It’s especially helpful to place it in paths between rows, or you can spread it over vegetable garden rows and cut holes in which to plant. To fight weeds, you might also choose to use a pre-emergent herbicide, such as corn gluten meal, which inhibits seed germination. Just know that it prevents everything from germinating, so wait until your seedlings are up and growing before you spread it.

7. Overhead watering squash, cucumbers or tomatoes

Overhead watering isn’t the most efficient way to irrigate any plant because so much can evaporate, but it is especially problematic on these crops. That’s because squash, cucumbers and tomato plants are easily susceptible to fungal diseases, which thrive on wet leaves.

Water at ground level

Irrigate squash, cucumbers and tomato plants at the base, whether you hand water or use a soaker hose or drip irrigation. Do it in the morning so any leaves that do get wet will dry quickly and plants will have plenty of moisture reserves going into the heat of afternoon.

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8. Skipping fall vegetable garden cleanup

While it is true that there are benefits to leaving plants standing over the winter, the vegetable garden isn’t the best place for this practice. If you’re not removing plants at the end of the growing season in fall, their decomposing debris is likely to create a home for pests and pathogens, which vegetable gardens are especially susceptible to. And it means you’ll be spending time cleaning up in spring when you really just want to be planting!

Clean up vegetable garden beds in fall

After the plants in your garden have completed their life cycles in fall, pull them and toss them in your compost pile (unless they are diseased). Roots of legumes like garden peas and beans can be left in the ground because as they decompose, they release nitrogen into the soil. So clip these plants at the base instead of pulling them. Once all that’s done, spread a layer of chopped-up leaf mulch over the beds to add a layer of organic matter and provide shelter for beneficial insects over winter.

Make vegetable gardening easier

In my vegetable garden, succession planting is the secret to a nonstop harvest. It allows me to maximize productivity in my raised beds and harvest year-round, even though I live in a cold climate. Whether I'm sowing the same type of seeds every few weeks, planting different vegetables in the same spot one after the other, or growing varieties that mature at different rates, there are some products that make growing vegetables easier. Here are some of my must-haves.

Row cover

Row cover is a lightweight material ideal for casting summer shade overly newly planted beds, as well as protecting from insects and frost.

Shade cloth

There are many types of shade cloth available but I find 40% shade cloth, which blocks 40% of sunlight, ideal for helping establish summer successive crops.

Soaker hoses

A soaker hose is made from a porous material that ‘weeps’ water all along its length. Run it alongside crops like tomatoes and cucumbers for easy irrigation.

Drip irrigation

Drip irrigation systems direct water at the base of plants, reducing water waste.

Grow lights for seedlings

I have a Floralight 3-tier light stand which I use to establish my summer succession plantings. Starting seeds for crops like cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and kale indoors give them a healthy head start.

Mini hoop tunnel

You can DIY your own mini hoop tunnel or buy a kit. These handy structures are great in spring and fall for protecting crops from cold weather. Float shade cloth on the hoops in summer to establish seeds or seedlings.

Organic vegetable fertilizer

Between successive crops I like to apply a slow-release organic fertilizer like Dr. Earth, Burpee Organic, or Espoma.

Vegetable gardening books

Want to know more about how to grow great vegetables year round? Read my books:
The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener
Niki Jabbour's Veggie Garden Remix
Growing Under Cover

Try straw bale garden beds this year

Don’t let bad soil or bad knees keep you from gardening. Joel Karsten, author of Straw Bale Gardens Complete, has come up with a way to get all the benefits of a raised bed with considerably less effort and expense. Watch the video above to see the great results we got using his method in our test garden.

What is straw bale gardening?

In short, you add high nitrogen fertilizer and water to straw bales to start the decomposition process. This creates a well-drained, high nutrient environment for plants. Most annuals and vegetables thrive here but Joel has found sweet corn is too tall and the bales don’t last long enough for perennials, such as rhubarb. You can get started with your own straw bale garden in early spring using the materials below. And here's a quick tip: Place the straw bales so the twine is on the side, that helps them stay standing later in the season.

Materials for a straw bale garden:

• Straw bales (not hay, it won’t absorb enough water)
  
• 1 lb. of lawn fertilizer per bale (at least 20% nitrogen not slow-release)
  
• 1 cup of 10-10-10 garden fertilizer per bale
  
• Potting mix
  

Tools

• Trowel
• Measuring cups
• Digital soil thermometer
• Soaker hose with timer (optional)

How to plant a straw bale garden

Step 1: Fertilize

When daytime temps are at least 45 degrees F follow the feeding schedule in the chart below and sprinkle the called-for amount evenly over the top of each straw bale. Cool weather slows bacteria growth so if it gets below 45 degrees F, skip that day and start up again when it warms up.

Step 2: Water the straw bales

After each application of fertilizer, water each straw bale until it’s running out the bottom. It usually takes longer to get them saturated the first couple of times. After that, about a gallon of water per bale will do it.

Watering tip

On chilly days, warm the water in a bucket in the sun for a few hours first to help the bacteria stay active.

Step 3: Check the temperature

The last couple of days check the temperature inside the straw bales by inserting a soil thermometer 6 in. into the straw. If it’s over 100 degrees F, let it cool for a day or two before you put in seedlings. Seeds won’t be affected by the higher temperatures. There’s no need to remove mushrooms or mold growing on the bales. It’s all part of the decomposition process.

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Step 4: Start planting into straw bales

There are two ways to plant up your straw bale garden: sow seeds or add potted plants. Either way, space them as you would if you were growing them in the ground, so the straw bales aren't too crowded.

• Sow seeds Apply a 2-in. layer of potting mix on top of the straw bale as I did at left to provide a more moisture-retentive material for germination and initial growth. Then plant your seeds the depth suggested on the package.

• Plant seedlings Make a home for seedlings, such as this tomato plug at right, by wedging the trowel between straw layers and pushing it back and forth. If the root ball is small like this one, add a bit of extra potting mix to help it hold additional moisture while the plant is getting established. Well-rooted plants in 4-in. pots shouldn’t need potting mix.

Step 5: Enjoy your harvest!

I tried Joel’s straw bale garden tips last summer and got a nice crop of vegetables, including the ‘Fantastico’ grape tomato above. One thing I did learn is that you’ll need to water straw bales more frequently than you do in-ground beds. A soaker hose with timer would make watering easier. In fall, till the partially broken-down straw into the soil or add it to your compost pile.

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How to Grow Vegetables in a Galvanized Raised Garden Bed

“When we moved here in 1999,” Polly says of the garden she shares with her husband, David, in Indianapolis, “this corner contained three gangly hornbeams and a rather unsightly planting bed surrounded by a high chain-link fence.” Eventually the chain link was replaced with a handsome wooden fence, the hornbeams were removed and a raised bed installed. “Despite my best efforts, the raised bed seemed to constantly be weedy,” she explains. “And we had rabbit issues.”

Benefits of growing vegetables in galvanized raised garden beds

Stock tanks, also known as troughs, make a great and attractive alternative to wooden raised beds. Benefits include:

• They’re easy to use (no construction required).
  
• Cost-wise they are a good investment because they will last for decades.
  
• They also will keep out burrowing animals: If rabbits are an issue, be sure to look for one that is at least 3 feet tall.
  
• Used stock tanks can be found at farm sales or on craigslist.org. New stock tanks can be purchased at farm stores or some garden centers.
  
• Troughs come in a variety of sizes, shapes and heights. The taller ones provide a great option for those with mobility issues.
  

Raised beds warm up quickly in the spring so you can plant them earlier than in-ground beds. But they also heat up in summer: Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant appreciate the extra soil warmth but sometimes the metal can be hot to the touch.

How many stock tank beds do you need?

Polly invested in three 8-foot-long tanks (for vegetables) and one 4-foot-long tank (reserved for herbs and edible flowers). Instead of installing a drip irrigation system, Polly prefers to water by hand. “I decided I actually enjoy standing out there holding the hose and checking on the garden’s status,” she says. Each spring, she mixes in a few inches of well-rotted compost to each of the troughs.

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How to start a galvanized raised garden bed for vegetables

1. Lay down a layer of landscape fabric.
   
2. Top it with a few inches of crushed limestone (a row of large stones along the sides keeps the gravel where it belongs).
   
3. Fill the bottoms of galvanized stock tanks (here there are four: three are 8 feet long, one is 4 feet long) with about 6 inches of pea gravel and covered that with landscape fabric (to keep the soil from washing away).
   
4. Finally, fill the stock tanks with a mix of compost and top soil. Remove the plugs from the bottom of the tanks to allow water to properly drain.
   

How to grow vegetables in containers

Polly also recruited smaller galvanized tubs and large growers’ pots into service as containers to take advantage of every inch of sunny space. If you want easy, large containers are better. Larger containers have more volume so plants won’t need to be watered as often. And plastic pots are slower to dry out than terra-cotta because water doesn’t evaporate through their sides. Polly uses 18-inch black plastic growers’ pots for growing ‘Sweet Million’ and ‘Sungold’ tomatoes and compact ‘Green Tiger’ zucchini. She rotates tomatoes between pots from year to year to avoid diseases.

Vertical garden with galvanized tubs

Polly employs 20-gallon galvanized tubs as vertical planters attached to the black-green painted fence. Galvanized shelving strips attached to the fence hold two-slot shelf brackets. There is a pair of brackets for each tub, which is held in place with attached supports. The adjustable brackets allow the tubs to be suspended at a slant to help maximize their exposure to the sun. The tubs are planted with greens, such as lettuce, spinach, cilantro and arugula.

A healthy harvest

There are more than enough herbs and vegetables to feed Polly and her husband. “I cook a lot,” she says, “and it’s wonderful to be able to run out to the garden to get a handful of herbs or edible flowers like the nasturtiums. Whatever is in season dictates our meals.”

As she shows off the green beans in her galvanized raised garden beds, Polly says, "The fun part is harvesting." Today she harvests bushels of herbs and vegetables from this manageable 13×30-foot space. Her garden includes:

• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Beans
• Beets
• Radishes
• Zucchini
• Kale
• Lettuces
• Chard
• Peppers
• Eggplant
• Dill
• Parsley
• Rosemary
• Basil
• Thyme
• Fennel
• Lavender
• Marigolds
• Nasturtiums

“I work full time as a pharmacist in an urban hospital with no windows,” Polly says. “Coming home and heading out to the backyard is incredibly therapeutic.”

Figure out how many vegetables to plant

When I first started vegetable gardening, I would sow every single seed in the envelope and plant every seedling in the pack, take care of hundreds of my growing babies and struggle with letting any of them go. Oversowing and overplanting left me with more produce than I could handle and sometimes weird-looking, stunted crops that were growing too close together. There was no way everything that germinated would fit in my garden, but watching those little seeds sprout and turn into plants was a treat in itself.

Adjust to your vegetable garden needs

Every year of experience with a vegetable garden helps you decide what to do the following year, but if you’re not sure if you’re planting enough or too much of a particular crop, start with the helpful chart below. It’ll help you decide whether to start with seeds or plants, how many to put in, and whether (and how much) to thin. If you’re getting started with vegetable gardening, this will help you mix and match your favorite crops into the space you have. These suggestions are based on fresh eating for a single person or a family of four, for four or five meals. You may decide you want to eat more than that, but it’s a starting point. If you’d like to freeze, can or pickle, decide how many meals you’d like to eat throughout the year and adjust accordingly.

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How many vegetable plants for a family

In general, multiply the number of plants per person by 3 or 4 for a family-sized planting. We’ve done the work for you in adjusting the numbers of these plants in the chart so at harvest you aren’t overwhelmed with too many delicious veggies. Keeping a garden journal from year to year will help you track which crops you had more or less than needed so you can better plan for future growing seasons.

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Siting

Nearly all vegetables and herbs prefer sunny locations. Your garden needs 6 to 8 hours of sunlight a day. Choose a spot away from trees and shrubs so your plants don’t have to compete with established plantings for water and nutrients. Siting your garden within hose length of your house will also make watering chores easier. In fact, the closer your garden is to your home, the more likely you’ll be to keep up with weeding and harvests. Proximity creates love! Depending on the size of your garden, you may also want to add stepping stones or paths so that planting, weeding, watering and harvesting are easier.

Intensive planting

Get the most out of any vegetable plot by using spacesaving intensive gardening techniques. Plant cool- and warm-weather crops successively in the same space, so you can get two harvests from one space. For example, the lettuce in the photo above could alternate with tomatoes. You can also plant two compatible crops together in the same place. Sow squash and corn seeds together and the squash will happily spread across the ground beneath the towering sweet corn plants. (A dual benefit is that the squash acts as a mulch underneath the corn.)

Seeds or seedlings

Garden veggies can be planted in two forms: seeds or seedlings. A seed pack can be purchased for a couple bucks and will yield dozens of plants. Seeds are the best way to start vegetables that are planted in mass quantities, such as spinach, lettuce, carrots and beans. They are also ideal for large-seeded veggies that sprout quickly in warm soil, such as melons, squash and cucumber. For crops that take longer to mature, such as tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, it’s often easier to buy started seedlings. Most vegetable gardens are a combination of sown seeds and planted seedlings. When you’re reading about a vegetable variety, you might see “days to harvest” in the description. If you’re sowing the seeds directly in the garden, it generally refers to the time between germination and harvest. For plants you set out, it usually refers to how long between moving the plant into the garden and harvest.

Watering

Vegetables need consistent moisture to grow and yield big harvests. Plants that get too wet or too dry can develop problems. For example, overwatered tomatoes may be tasteless. Underwatered vegetables may not produce. Generally, vegetables need 1 in. of water each week. If you stick your finger into the soil and it’s dry past the first knuckle or plants start wilting, they need water. Many herbs prefer drier soils—think about the native Mediterranean growing conditions of oregano (Origanum vulgare hirtum) or rosemary (Romarinus officinalis). Watering deeply and less often is better than quick daily spritzes with the hose. The best way to quench your garden’s thirst (and also the easiest) is to deliver water directly to the root systems by using drip irrigation or a soaker hose. You can see how this works in the photo above. This cuts down on loss of water due to evaporation and it keeps moisture off leaves, which can lead to fungal problems. If you have a small garden or containers, hand watering works well, too. Water the base of the plants, not the leaves.

Feeding

The first step in feeding your plants is to start with good soil. Soil with adequate organic matter will provide natural nutrients as well as hold moisture—the two things plants need to maintain good health. Some vegetable crops, such as onions, corn, peppers, tomatoes and watermelon, are considered “heavy feeders” which means they need extra nutrients in order to produce top yields. You can feed them in several ways: Add a top dressing of compost around the base of your plants. You can also add a slow-release granular fertilizer when you plant. It will break down over time, adding nutrients as the plant grows. Or you can spray plant foliage with a liquid fertilizer every week or two. When using fertilizers, make sure to follow the instructions on the packaging. More is not better—overfertilizing can harm plants.

Mulching

One of the best ways to keep soil moisture consistent is to add a 1- to 2-in. layer of mulch in all exposed areas. Open soil loses moisture quicker than covered soil does and mulch simply covers the ground, locking in moisture. Use whatever type of mulch is local, accessible or appeals to you aesthetically: Grass clippings, in the photo above, rotted leaves, pine needles and wood chips are all organic options. You can also use nonplant mulch, such as shredded newspaper or black plastic, to keep soil covered. Any kind of mulch also reduces weeding chores because most weeds can’t push through. Fewer weeds means a clean-looking garden and less competition for water and nutrients for your vegetables.

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Staking

Some crops need to grow vertically, which also allows you to conserve valuable garden space. Upwardly mobile veggies, such as pole beans, peas, cucumbers, squash and gourds, all need supports. Most tomatoes also require staking. You can use the wire cages in the photo above, existing fences, tepees, or trellises to keep vines lifted from the ground. Staked vegetables experience better air flow and are easier to harvest, too.

Protecting from pests

You aren’t the only one looking forward to your ripening produce. Nibbling mammals, such as rabbits and deer, can mow down your beloved garden overnight. The cages in the photo above are great-looking, but even something as simple as a 3-ft.- tall surrounding of small-mesh chicken wire fencing will protect crops from rabbits. There are a host of chemical and motion-activated “deer deterrents,” but 8-foot-tall fencing is ultimately the best solution (albeit an expensive one). Fruit crops, such as raspberries and strawberries, can be protected with netting to discourage birds.

Extending the season

Coolweather crops, such as lettuce, broccoli, spinach and radishes, can be grown in chilly spring and fall temperatures. To protect these early- and late-season harvests when temperatures drop below freezing, use season-extenders, such as row covers. A cold frame, a box with a glass or plastic top, protects seedlings from cold snaps while allowing them to bask in the warming rays of the sun. Just be sure to open up the tops on sunny days or plants could get too warm. Alternately, in Southern climates, use shaded row covers, which filter sunlight and reduce heat so that plants don’t overheat.

Ready to get started? Click here to read our article about [several vegetables that are great for beginners](https://www.gardengatemagazine.com/articles/vegetables/edible-plant-guide/growing-tips-for-five-easy-vegetables/), and to learn some tips to grow them successfully.