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Any gardener will tell you that gardening is one of the most absorbing and rewarding occupations you can undertake. Any gardener will also tell you — probably loudly and at length — that gardening requires patience, resilience, hard w o r k , and a lot of planning. Paperwork is probably the last thing you have in mind when you think about growing your o w n vegetables. More likely you see yourself leaning contently on your spade as all sorts of lush, healthy plants shoot up in front of your eyes. The fact of the matter, t h o u g h , is that gardening begins not w i t h seeds and a spade but with paper and a pencil. A successful vegetable garden begins with a wellorganized plan of your garden space. Drawing a plan may not sound as exciting as getting outdoors and planting things. But if you don't spend the necessary time planning what to grow in your garden and w h e n and where to plant it, you may spend the rest of the growing season correcting the mistakes you made because you didn't have a plan. It's a lot easier to erase a bed w h e n it's a few lines on a piece of paper than w h e n it's an expanse of soil and plants. Your plan should include not only the types and quantities of vegetables you're going to grow and how they'll be positioned in your garden, but also planting dates and approximate dates of harvest. Making a plan may seem like a lot of w o r k to get done before you even start gardening, but careful planning will help you make the best use of your time and available space and will result in bigger, higher-quality crops. This chapter discusses all the questions you need to take into account w h e n you're planning your garden — the hows, whats, whys, whens, and wherefores. The specific cultural requirements of each vegetable are given in detail in Part 2. THE FIRST DECISION: WHAT TO GROW (AND H O W MUCH) The first step to planning a successful vegetable garden is to decide which vegetables to grow. This may sound fairly straightforward, but there are a lot of factors involved, and you need to answer some basic questions: What vegetables do you and your family like? Do you want to eat all your crop fresh, or store or preserve some of your harvest? Can you grow the vegetables you like successfully in your climate? How much time and energy can you put into your garden? The first factor to consider is personal preference. What vegetables do you like to eat? The first decision to make in choosing what to grow in your vegetable garden is simple: What vegetables do
you and your family like to eat? Perhaps you'd love to grow peas because you remember how wonderful they tasted fresh out of the garden in your childhood. Or maybe your family's crazy about spinach salad or broccoli casserole, or you're just plain tired of frozen vegetables. What are you going to do with it? H o w do you plan to use your vegetables, and what are you going to do w i t h the part of your crop that you don't eat as soon as it's harvested? Do you want to freeze, can, dry, store, or make preserves w i t h some of your crop? How much do you need? H o w you plan to use your vegetables directly affects how much of each vegetable you want to grow, and will influence your decision about the kind of vegetable you're going to plant — all carrots aren't alike, and there are hundreds of different tomato varieties. Can you grow it? Not all vegetables grow satisfactorily in ail climates. Some vegetables like it hot; some refuse to grow in hot weather. Some vegetables flourish w h e n it's c o l d ; others just shiver and die. Certain plants go f r o m seed to harvest in a couple of months and will grow almost anywhere in the United States — green beans and some kinds of lettuce are among these obliging vegetables. Others are very picky and need a long stretch of warm or cool weather. You have to take the plant's needs into consideration before you can make a decision on wh