Vegetable Gardening

General gardening information and links to specific crops

Home Vegetable Gardening - by Nancy Garrison, Urban Horticulture Advisor, Santa Clara County, University of California Cooperative Extension
A comprehensive guide to home vegetable gardening; includes planning your garden, caring for your garden and harvesting information. There are tables with nutritional information and links to documents with detailed information on individual crops.

Other garden information:

Frost free dates - Courtesy of VictorySeeds.com

California - average first & last frost dates

Other states - average first & last frost dates

Planning the garden

Plan and Prepare - selecting the garden site and what to plant.
(4 pages 196 kb)

Gardening at a Glance - chart with planting dates for different regions of California, distance between plants, distance between rows and how to preserve.
(4 pages 64 kb)

What, Where, How - planning the garden
(2 pages 140 kb)

Year Round Gardening with a Greenhouse
By Conrad Link and David Ross
(7 pages 153 kb)

Seeds

Starting Seeds Indoors
(3 pages 275 kb)

Seed Germination Temperatures
(3 pages 89kb)

Spring Seed Starting Schedule - chart to be used to calculate planting and setting-out dates of spring seedlings.
(2 pages 17 kb)

Fall Seed Starting Schedule - chart to be used to calculate planting and setting-out dates of fall seedlings.
(1 page 9 kb)

Fertilization

Converting Fertilizer Rates for Small Gardens - chart and calculations for fertilizer conversion.
(2 pages 17 kb)

Irrigation

Saving Water in the Vegetable Garden
(3 pages 63 kb)

Drip: Watering the Home Garden
By Ralph Strohman and J.L. Meyer
(4 pages 288 kb)

Soils

Managing Clay Soils in the Home Garden
(2 pages 13 mb)

Managing Compacted Soils in the Vegetable Garden
By Ralph Strohman and J.L. Meyer
(3 pages 606 kb)