Planting a Garden for the First Time This Year. Where and What Is the Best . .

Tomato...you can do a bazillion things with them, especially make your own sauce for pasta. mmmmm.
Corn...we used to eat it for dinner....and I mean nothing but white sweet corn.
Strawberries....this was always really hard for me because I wanted to pick them before they were ripe, man they are tastey.
Those are my top three, but I also like carrots, peas, peppers, asparagus, potato, watermelon, cantaloupe, cabbage.
I have no clue where you get good seeds....we lived on a farm and my dad got them bulk (what the entire farm grew we grew in our own gardens).
I can tell you it's wonderful to just go outside in your garden and pick something for dinner. I think I was in my mid 20's before I ever bought corn. Happy gardening! =)

The best things to grow depend on your spot, the light it gets and the quality of the soil. For some reason i have had 0 luck with certain veggies and great luck with others. For me teh easiest things to grow have been zucchini, potatoes, and pumpkins. I can not grow decent corn to save my life! And I hear tomatoes are easy but I am n ot a big tomatoe fan so I don't grow thoswe. I have never been very good at gardening, but I lvoe it anyway! Best of luck!

Your local greenhouse will have seeds and plants (for those things you don't want to start from seed). Many other stores like WalMart, KMart and such will also have seeds and sometimes plants to sell.

If you like salads (your mention of lettuce) - get some onion sets for those little green onions, bibb-type lettuce seed (black seeded simpson makes good wilted lettuce salads) - many varieties of those (buttercrunch, bibb, red oak, romaine, etc). radishes -- that will let you have some early salad fixings!

Green beans (prefer bush here but some like pole beans), tomatoes (red and yellow!), bell peppers, cucumbers, corn are all great straight from the garden - just do not plant any of these until the soil has warmed and you are past any frost (not sure of your area, but your greenhouse will help - here it's Derby Day).

Good luck and enjoy!!

I simply don't have time to give you good answers as to what you need to do right now, but if you contact me personally with your email address, I can send you some information on this and then some.

The short answer to seeds is that you should purchase open pollinated seed. I won't go into all the reasons why right now. I see that you are in Orem. The best place I know of to buy seeds in Utah County is Carpenter Seed Co. at 1030 South State Street in Provo as you head toward Springville. Most of their seeds are open pollinated and none are GMO.

Also, you might consider purchasing Eliott Coleman's "Four Season Gardening" for some good, no-nonsense tips on gardening.

This is the time to go to the best LOCAL nursery in your area, and pick the brains of the people there. They will tell you what plants and what varieties will work best where you live. If you can be patient about what you get this summer, and put a lot of time right now into making the soil the best it can be, then your garden will make you happy for years. That doesn't mean you can't have some produce (and flowers) now - but focus on your gardening area as well. Your local experts will show you how.

I've always gotten seeds at the local hardware store. I guess that isn't too fancy or anything, but they always seem to work just as well as anything else.

My favorite things are the basics - some good basil, tomatoes, and peppers. You can always make spaghetti sauce or sauage and peppers with those ingredients.

The thing I loved the best (when I had a huge garden as a little girl) was the sugar baby watermelons!! Watching the vines spring forth from the mounds was always so exciting and of course, when the flowers turned to fruit!

Have fun. Plant what you like and enjoy!
~C.

I usually go to Vineyard Garden Center on Geneva in Orem. I also hear Cooks up on 1600 N in Orem is good. My favorite things to plant in the spring garden are spinach (I've used Bloomsdale Long-Standing spinach) which is great for salads and green smoothies, and easy to grow, peas (sugar snap) and onions. I'm also going to try carrots and lettuce again (haven't had much success in the past). I've learned that lettuce shouldn't be planted directly in the soil, you need to start it inside or buy some plants already started from a nursery. Same thing with broccoli and cauliflower.