Garden Tips Summer 2008
		The Vegetable Garden
		This past spring my husband and I decided to plant a vegetable garden. As I evaluated the lawn area we were going to convert to a vegetable garden, I was concerned about how much time it would take to get this garden bed ready. Of course, I wasn't about to say "no" to creating more garden area. Over the next few hours and days, my thoughts turned to some of the previous garden speakers I had listened to and to my library of garden books. While I have not done much vegetable gardening, it was something I had considered. When I attended presentations on vegetable gardening, I did manage to add a few vegetable books to my libaray. Among the books in my collection are "Four Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman and "Lasagna Gardening" by Pat Lanza. I felt some comfort as I considered the "Lasagna Gardening" technique. As this technique involves building a garden bed by placing a thick layer of newspaper on the grass then building the growing medium on top of that. "Four Season Harvest" was wonderful in helping me decide what to plant and when to plant it. While doing some internet searching, I stumbled across "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. The idea with square foot gardening is to build gardens in raised beds and plant by the square foot rather then in long rows. Our vegetable garden beds include some concepts from all of these sources. We started by building two 4 x 8 foot raised beds. This worked out well, as our yard has a slight slope and this created a level bed for us. Some of the grass was removed from the high side of the beds. The other grass was "aerated" with the use of a pitch fork. On top of this went some cardboard that we watered down, and then added planting medium. We planted some of the "cool season crops" in early spring and look forward to planting our "warm season crops" soon. When fall rolls around, I'll refer back to Eliot Coleman's "Four Season Harvest" for some techniques to extend our harvest season into the late fall and early winter. Vegetables can be grown in an area as small as a container on the patio, or in a large traditional vegtable garden. Following are some links to information that should be helpful, whatever the size of your vegetable garden.
		Vegetable Gardening in Containers Texas A&M University, Extension Horticulture Information Resource
		Container Vegetable Gardening North Carolina State University, Extension Service
		Small Plot and Intensive Gardening (pdf file) Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service, Department of Horticulture
		Intensive Gardening Methods Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Tech
		Companion Planting (pdf file) Cornell Cooperative Extension
		Companion Planting Cornell University, Department of Horticulture
		Vegetable Gardening Basics University of Illinois Extension
		Directory of Vegetable Fact Sheets University of Illinois Extension
		Organic Vegetable Production (pdf file) Purdue University