Keep your vegetable garden going with cool-season crops

Planting a vegetable plot and keeping it productive is easy when you start small, keep the basics in mind and plant reliable varieties.

This month is the ideal time to put in your cool-season crops, like spinach, onions, collards, garlic and kale.

Use these step-by-step tips to guide you toward a harvest of fresh vegetables that bring you good nutrition and a lower food bill:

Locate it properly. A sunny, well-drained spot close to a water faucet is ideal. Leafy greens tolerate some shade, but other crops want eight hours of sun daily.

Grow what you need. Avoid the urge to tear up your entire back yard for a vegetable garden; you may end up with more weeds than vegetables because you don't have the time to maintain it. Instead, consider a 10-by-10-foot garden. In many families, five to six crops is all that's needed. You can always expand next year.

Make it simple. Forget tilling and shoveling soil. The easiest vegetable garden is an above-ground design made with composite lumber-type boards; build the frames to hold soil 12 to 18 inches deep. Once the boards are installed, get a truckload of good topsoil delivered and fill it to the top of the boards. Water and allow soil to settle before planting. Vegetables are easy to harvest and weeding is minimal in this style vegetable gardening.

Amend your soil. Adding organic matter makes gardening so much easier because it improves everything, nutrients, moisture and results.

Grow what you will eat. Crops like mesclun, arugula and radishes give you instant salads for the dinner table. Greens like spinach can be sauteed and used as a pizza or pasta topping. Garlic adds gusto to lots of dishes.

No space for a ground garden? Large pots of compact vegetables easily get you enough for two.

Grow a little for someone else. Contact your local food bank or church to see if you can donate a few extra vegetables for people in need.

TRY THESE

Winterbor kale. This nutritious leafy green is a vigorous producer that endures winter easily, even in very cold climates. Cut the outer leaves so that the center continues growing. Space transplants about 12 inches apart

Georgia collards. Another leafy green similar to kale, collards offer a larger, stronger, sweet cabbage-like flavor. Leaves taste best when young. Space transplants 36 inches apart.