How to start a vegetable garden

So you'd like to follow Michelle Obama's lead and start your own vegetable garden?

With just a little planning, having a kitchen garden can be rewarding and fun, especially for people new to the hobby. Here is a commonsense, eight-step strategy that can help get you growing:

1. Start by involving the entire family and deciding what it is you want to eat. What veggies are your favorites? Which would be easiest to grow?

"You can dream all you want about olives and figs, but if you live in northern Minnesota, it's not going to happen. But that's OK. The reality is you can grow a variety of things, no matter where you live," said Roger Doiron, a home garden advocate involved in the campaign to convert a small patch of the White House's South Lawn into an organic vegetable garden.

The First Lady helped break ground for the garden last week. It's believed to be the first cultivated at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden during World War II. Produce harvested from the garden will be used for family meals, state dinners and a Washington soup kitchen.

The garden also will be used to teach children about healthier, homegrown foods at a time when obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. About one-third of the nation's children and teens are dangerously overweight, government officials say.

2. Buy the necessary tools and seeds, pots and compost and plants.

Some supplies are remarkably cheap. A package of summer squash seeds, for instance, runs about $2.50. A nine-pack of cabbage seedlings? Around $3.50. Onion sets, 100 to the package, have been seen priced at $2.99.

3. Determine the best time to get your plants into the ground.

Find out when the threat of the last killing frost has passed. Familiarize yourself with how long it will take to transform seeds to table fare. You can turn to fellow gardeners or check with your county extension agent about the best crops and varieties to grow, and when it's best to grow them in your area. (www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html).

4. Sketch a layout of your ideal garden plot.

Start small, especially your first time out. You always can enlarge the garden or plant succession crops, which are follow-up vegetables that will mature before season's end.

5. Garden location is as important as size.