With the economic downturn, have you considered planting a vegetable garden to lessen the pull on your purse strings? In addition to saving shekels, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your veggies have no harmful pesticides applied.

Taking the dream from fantasy to reality can be a daunting task. However, if you get a few elements right from the beginning and you don't bite off more than you can chew, the rewards are well worth the effort. If you have children, involve them in planning and management.

The quickest path to success is to grow your vegetables in framed beds built from 2" x 12" lumber. Framed beds are simply bottomless boxes that you build on top of the ground and then add your own soil mix. Here is a good how-to website: http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/greenline/i1285_384.html

There are several reasons to grow vegetables in framed beds. With our heavy clay soil, a framed bed allows you to fill the box with an ideal blend of soil for growing vegetables. In addition, a framed bed is also easier to weed, water and harvest than ground-level rows. If you have difficulty bending over, you can construct it as high as is comfortable for you.

If you do decide to take the plunge for the first time, here's a caveat: Start small. Many would-be vegetable gardeners start out with starry eyes, only to face the July reality of crabgrass taller than the vegetables.

'Tis much more satisfying to have a small, well-tended plot than feel guilty about a weed patch. You can always expand next year. And you would be surprised how much you can produce in a small space, especially if you go vertical on trellises, cages and teepees to maximize space.

For vegetables, it is important to know the average first and last frost dates. In central Illinois, zone 5, the average last frost is April 15. This does not mean it is a frost-free date. There is a 50 percent chance of frost after this date. In central Illinois, the FROST FREE date is May 12. The first fall frost averages around October 21. This will determine your growing season.

Frost-resistant vegetables include: leaf lettuce, onions, peas, spinach, Irish potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and radishes.

Hold off planting frost-tender plants until mid-May, but be sure you have enough time before the autumn frosts to produce a crop. Seed packages, catalog descriptions and plant tags provide this information.

One of the most important requirements for vegetables is enough sunlight: at least 6 to 7 hours of full sun per day.

Another element is accessibility to water. You want to ensure that your efforts don't wither away because it is a chore to get water to the plants. Soaker hoses provide the best watering results for the least amount of money.

A third important factor is good soil. Without the right soil, gardening will be a constant struggle with less-than-rewarding results. Most vegetable plants are rapid growers and heavy feeders so they need rich soil. Here is a recipe to create the perfect growing medium in your framed beds: 50% garden soil, 25% well-rotted manure (at least 2 years old), 25% compost or humus.

Fill the framed beds with this soil mixture to about 3 inches from the top of the bed, allowing room for a layer of mulch for water conservation. One cubic yard covers about 100 square feet, 3" deep. If you create raised beds 4 feet by 4 feet and 12" deep, you would use a little over 1/2 a cubic yard of soil for each bed.

A 2" to 3" layer of ground or shredded bark is a good choice of mulching material because it breaks down nicely in the soil. Make sure the bark has aged for a year before applying it because fresh bark robs nitrogen from the soil and therefore, from the plants, causing stunted growth. Keep the mulch away from the plant's stem to prevent rotting.

Heirloom plants are varieties that have been handed down generation to generation. They are open pollinated and were developed before 1940. It is fun to grow the same varieties planted by your ancestors or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Heirloom plants have persisted through the years because they are sturdy.

You can reduce the plant diseases and insects that attack your vegetable garden by practicing crop rotation. Rotating your crops doesn't involve pirouetting potatoes or planting on turntables. Crop rotation simply involves planting crops of different families in a different section of the garden each year. An easy way to manage this is to divide your garden into four equal sections and move particular crops clockwise from one section to another each year.

Plants related to each other tend to be prone to the same diseases and insect pests. For example, squash borers attack not only squash vines but also pumpkins. The squash borer larvae overwinter in the soil, but if they wake up the next summer and the squash vines are now at the other end of the garden, the borers will have more difficulty finding the vines.

Potato beetles and potato scab also overwinter in the soil, ready to infect the next year's crop. Planting garlic and onions in that spot the next year will repel some garden insects as well as suppress some soil-borne plant diseases.

In the section of the garden where last year's members of the nightshade family --potatoes, tomatoes or eggplants -- were growing, plant some members of the cabbage family, such as broccoli or cauliflower. These cruciferous crops have the ability to clean the soil of diseases that attack this family.

Other plants are heavy feeders and will use up much of the available nutrients in the soil. Sweet corn is a heavy feeder with an especially large appetite for nitrogen.

Planting a legume such as peas or beans in that same plot the following year will replenish the nitrogen used up by the corn.

As always, if you have gardening questions, call the Extension office and a Master Gardener will help you.

UPCOMING EVENTS

* Saturday, March 21 – Lawn & Garden Show at Cross County Mall

Esther Lutz on Squirrels in the Yard -12 noon

Kathy Hummel on deer- resistant plants - 1:00

* Saturday, March 28th 10 am Max Davis - Douglas Hart Nature Center – Veggie Gardening.