Home gardens are very popular and practical nowadays. It all starts with a little planning and education. First walk around your yard, look at what areas get sun and what areas don’t, at the same time think about what areas of your yard get high traffic from kids playing or when you have people over for barbecues, etc. You don’t want your home garden in the way of everything else.

In your planning of the vegetable garden, layout places where you can put several small beds around the yard rather than one large one with wasted space & soil between long rows. Another thing to give thought to in your planning stage is how well many vegetables and herbs grow in pots or containers which taking up very little space or a hydroponics garden could also be a solution to limited space.

There are lots of advantages to smaller beds, it’s easier to control weeds, they require less compose and can be raised 8 to 12 inches for better drainage and growing conditions. Also you’ll be able keep a designed and beautifully landscaped yard through a potager style where flowers are mixed together with vegetable plants and herbs. And many vegetables are quite attractive and colorful, also most herbs are flowering.

Nowadays you can find everything you need in garden tools and equipment for your vegetable gardening online as well as in local stores. Composters and garden carts can make your gardening much easier. There’s a large variety of kids gardening tools available to help you make gardening a family activity. And the smaller gardening beds are easier to get around with lawn mower equipment or lawn aerators.

Since you will need to rotate your vegetable crops each year to different beds to preserves micro-nutrients and prevents diseases building up in the soil. Vegetables fall into different plant family groups. Each vegetable with a group uses pulls the same nutrients out of the soil and are susceptible to the same diseases and pests. For example squashes, melons & cucumbers belong to the same family while tomatoes and peppers belong to a different group. So you plant all your squashes and cucumbers in one bed and put tomatoes together with peppers in another bed. Having several smaller beds makes it easy to rotate your different vegetable groups from one bed to another bed each year.

Spending a little time educating yourself on home gardening will pay off. Not only can you easy learn what vegetables to plant together for rotate but also where to plant garlic and other plants to discourage insects without having to use pesticides. People have been growing vegetables for a very, very long time so no need to re-invent the wheel or go through all that trial and error just go down to your County Agricultural Extension Service for all the ins and outs of growing vegetables in your area.