Step 1.Select a Location for the Garden
Vegetables need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight each day, and more is better. Pick a place that is convenient to the tool shed, a source of water, and not too far from the kitchen. Your first garden should be no larger than about 100 square feet -- you will be amazed at how much you can grow in that space -- but there should be room to expand later if you wish.

Step 2.Make a Long List of Vegetables
Collect a few vegetable seed catalogs (gardening magazines are full of ads for them). Concentrate on salad makings for your first garden, and list all the vegetables that look good to you. At this point, don’t worry about how much room you have.

Step 3.Make a Short List
Now comes the hard part: paring down the list to what you actually have room for. Use the information in the catalogs to know when to plant each vegetable and how much room it will require. From the long list, select vegetables to fit both your garden space and your family’s appetite for that vegetable. Try not to plant more than you will actually eat or can give away.

Step 4.Lay Out the Garden
Make a map of your garden on graph paper (4 lines to an inch is a good scale) with each square representing a square foot of garden. Make several copies of the map for different seasons. Draw little circles the right size for each vegetable in the garden, using the spacing recommended in the catalog description. You now have a planting plan.

The last thing to do is make a planting schedule. Again using information from the catalogs, decide what date to plant each vegetable. For plants you will only use in small numbers, such as tomatoes, it may be simpler to buy a few plants from your local garden center. For most others, it works better to plant from seed. Order your seeds from the catalogs, or buy them locally. Congratulations - you’re ready for your first garden.