10 steps to success with your first vegetable garden

Never grown a vegetable garden before? Here are 10 easy steps to success.

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8. Pay attention to fertilizing and watering. Spread a balanced organic fertilizer over the ground in late winter at the rate suggested on the container. Or, if existing vegetation is growing well, use soybean meal at 2 pounds per 100 square feet. Or apply an inch depth of compost. Set out a straight-sided can to measure water, and turn on the sprinkler once a week so the combination of rain and sprinkling equal an inch depth of water in that can.

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9. Weed regularly and frequently. Weeds are much easier to kill — and haven't had time to spread many seeds — when they are small.

10. Grow vegetables that you like to eat, and choose the best-tasting varieties.

So get a tiller or shovel, and dig up your new garden area, or use the newer method of smothering existing vegetation beneath a few layers of newspaper topped with compost or other mulch, then plant immediately.

For future successes, thoroughly clean up old plants when they're finished or at the end of the season, and move plants around the garden so they don't grow in the same spot for a couple of years.

Finally, read about gardening. I suggest "Vegetable Gardening: From Planting to Picking – The Complete Guide to Creating a Bountiful Garden," by Fern Marshall Bradley and Jane Courtier; "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible," by Edward C. Smith; and my own "Weedless Gardening."

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