• The part of the country you live in

• Your likes and dislikes of vegetables and fruits you like to eat

• How much room you have to grow a garden

• Whether you want a raised garden bed

• If you want to use containers to grow some of your garden in

• Thecondition of the ground you will plant your garden in.

When I was just a toddler we moved to Rexburg, Idaho. It was a year after the big flood of 1975. Our lot had been devestated by the flood, and contained only flood silt and sand. Most places the sand went 6 feet deep. Not exactly what you would grow a garden in.

My folks had to build up the ground with manure and compost. Of course fresh manure took a year to break down, so our first garden was a disaster. Our corn was barely 18 to 20 inches tall, with no cobs of corn to harvest. The second year, after the manure had decomposed, our corn was 6 feet tall. So you can understand that the ground you plant in is very important.

Growing a garden takes attention to fertilizing and continual watering. Usually gardens need full sun too. In our Rexburg garden, materials that would retain moisture was important to add to the soil.

I heard of a woman once digging up the ground under a walnet tree to grow her garden. She had beautiful foilage, but no tomatoes and very little other produce. Later, she told me, that she learned that it's not good to have a garden under a walnut tree because the roots of the walnut tree do something to the ground so the plants won't produce fruit.

Knowledge becomes a very key point in growing a garden. So probably the best advice I'd give you for obtaining garden-ideas, would be to read as much as you can about all phases of gardening, before you start your garden so you'll have a good experience your first time.

If you like gardening organically. Mom and Dad use compost from table scraps and manure for fertilizer. They grow some remarkable gardens even though the growing season is much less up north than it is in the south.

My parents have moved to Utah now, and they have built a home from the ground up. Mom writes about their experience on her own website. You might want to visit my Mom's site HERE