It's important to emphasize that you need to draw a plan of your vegetable garden first. When doing this, always leave space to get at your vegetables for harvesting and maintenance. You'll also find that drawing your plan to scale will be a great help in allowing you to decide where your vegetables are to be planted. You will make excellent use of the space you have available by doing this.

Now you need to make some decisions about what you'd like to grow. Make a list of your choices while keeping in mind what's readily available from your local plant nursery. Try to avoid any unusual vegetables, they can often be expensive, hard to get or hard to grow.

Now go back to your garden map and decide what plants go where. The importance of a good plan is to avoid any problems as your plants start to grow, so plan carefully. It's also important to follow your plan closely.

You should study your plants carefully. Some vegetables will need a lot of sun, and some will require more shade. It's very important to be sure you're planting all of your vegetables in areas where they'll grow well.

If space is a problem, here's one simple way to fully utilize the area you're able to use. This method is widely used in France. As an example, if you have carrots and spinach on your list you simply mix together a packet of each.

You then sow your seed mixture into a furrow about 1/2 inch deep. The spinach grows rapidly and helps break up the soil to give the carrots more room to grow.

In about four weeks you will be able to start harvesting your young spinach which in turn allows your carrots the space to grow. You'll have a good crop of juicy carrots by the time your spinach harvest is finished.

Another illustration would be parsley or lettuce with radishes. This system can be used with lots of vegetables that mature at different times. Early varieties of radish sown with turnips and lettuce is often done in France.

The quickest growers are the radishes, which will be exhausted before the lettuce are mature enough to be harvested. Likewise the turnips will be ready to pull up by the time the lettuce are just about finished. Also, if your rows of plants are in an east-west pattern, you need to sow your tallest plants to the north side of these rows. This is to make sure that your shorter plants don't get shaded by the taller ones.

You should always make sure to plant things like corn, which is probably the tallest plant you would grow in a vegetable garden, in a position where it doesn't interfere with the sunlight reaching your smaller plants.

Make use of this tactic for plants that like plenty of shade by deliberately planting them beside taller ones. You're then creating their ideal growing conditions. As an illustration, plant a cool weather plant like spinach in the shade of taller growing plants such as beans or peas.

This could help you grow shade-loving vegetables in your garden, even if you don't have any shady spots available. By being creative with placement, you might be able to grow vegetables you never thought you'd be able to grow in your location!

Home Products on our marketplace

Ready to fill your small garden with flowers and perfume? Tom Johnson has a Free Report for you called Container Gardening Secrets.