If you've opened a half a dozen vegetable seed packages, you'll realize how much their sizes can vary. These different sizes are going to affect how you plant them.

Big runner bean seeds are easy to sow individually at the proper spacing for them to grow. Tiny carrot seeds, however, are not so easy and have to be sown in a line - and then be thinned out as they grow to allow for the proper spacing.

The size of the seeds also affects how deep you should sow them. Seeds contain "food" reserves that keep them nourished from the point of germination until they break through the soil into the light. Larger seeds contain more food and can last longer than small seeds.

If you plant smaller seeds too deep, they can run out of food before they have a chance to break through the soil and reach sunlight.

I hate weeding my garden. I would much rather spend my time doing something more productive or even just sitting and enjoying the garden.

Fortunately, there are several things that can help prevent weeds in the first place, so you won't have to deal with them once the garden is planted (or at least, not nearly as many of them).

1. Clear the ground before you plant Before you plant, put some extra time into clearing the soil of any perennial weeds. Make sure you get as much of the root as possible - not just the part that's visible.

2. Don't disturb the soil during routine care Cultivating the soil in your garden can bring weed seeds up to the surface where they can sprout. Try to keep the soil disturbance to a minimum
when maintaining your garden throughout the growing season.

3. Crop rotation Some crops are more capable of fighting weeds than others. For example, potatoes can crowd out the weeds a lot more easily than onions. By rotating your crops around your garden from one year to the next, it's less likely that weeds will build up in one part of it.

4. Mulch Cover bare soil with mulch to keep weeds from getting the light they need to grow. This can be organic mulch, such as rotted compost, or inorganic mulch such as landscape cloth. Organic mulch is easier to spread between the vegetables you have planted. It should be one to three inches deep to suppress weeds.

While a huge garden with almost limitless space is a dream for most gardeners, the reality is we usually only have a fraction of what we would like.

Some of us might even be limited to a few small planters on a porch or balcony.

Don't let that discourage you though. It just means you need to plan a little differently.

You'll want to grow vegetables that are high yielding. For example, a single zucchini planted in a container could produce a dozen or more fruit over the course of the summer, where the same container planted with spinach might only produce enough for a single serving (or less).

Lettuce, pole beans, tomatoes and zucchini are all good choices for high yielding vegetables.

It's also a good idea to consider the cost of buying vegetables and the difficulty of finding them. Main crop potatoes are easy to find in any supermarket and are cheap, so they don't make sense for a small garden. Out-of-season potatoes are a different story though. If you plan it well, you could have them fresh from your own garden when they cost an arm and a leg in the stores.

Ease of growing is also a factor in a small garden. If you have a number of plants in a larger garden, it's not going to be as big a deal if one of them fails as it will if it's the only plant you had room to grow.

Before you start building your raised bed system, you should cultivate the whole section the same way you would for any other vegetable garden design. Remove all weeds, loosen and level the soil, and remove any large rocks or other foreign items.

Ideally, you want to make your beds 4 feet wide so you can reach the center from either side, giving you access to the entire width. Since you're going to have to walk around the end of the bed to get to the other side, they shouldn't be too long - probably 10 feet maximum.

Most of the paths between the beds should be 18 inches (or more) wide, with a few 2 to 3 foot paths for wheelbarrow access.

The edging of your bed can be any height, really. It will depend on the soil you've got to work with for one thing. If you need to add more organic matter for effective growing, you'll need higher beds than if the soil is already in good shape.

Most people think of a garden in the traditional sense - a large rectangular area with rows of vegetables separated by enough space to walk and maintain the plants.

This isn't written in stone however. A raised bed garden has several advantages over the traditional layout.

First, it can be built to suit your yard. As long as it gets enough sunlight, there's no need to have everything in one place. You could build raised beds around the outer edge of your yard or in some other way that uses the space to the best advantage.

With raised beds, you also avoid compressing the soil when you walk through. You need to leave enough space between the beds to be able to access them all for maintenance and harvesting, but you won't need to walk in the bed itself.

This can make a big difference in keeping the soil from becoming too compressed, as well as keeping it from eroding around the roots of your plants.

You'd be surprised at how many gardeners spend little or no time planning their garden every year.

Sometimes they just can't resist all the beautiful pictures in the seed catalogs while other times they fill half their garden with vegetables nobody in their family even likes, because "those vegetables are in every garden."

One of the first steps you should take when planning your garden is to decide what you like and will eat. Don't grow something you wouldn't buy to eat.

And since most of us have limited space for our garden, try to grow things that fit any or all of the following criteria:

• Hard to find in the store
• Expensive to buy
• Are best when fresh
• Offer different varieties than you can buy in the store

Have you ever found yourself with way too much of a vegetable when the time comes that it's ready to harvest? It's certainly happened to me - I've had to give vegetables to everyone I can find to get rid of them.

The problem is the way most people plant their garden - a row of one vegetable, another row of a second one and so on.

The more effective way to plant that will give you a steady supply of vegetables over a longer season is called succession planting.

Basically, instead of a single row of each vegetable split a single row into multiple vegetables. So one row might have 3 or 4 sections, each with its own seeds planted.

Then two weeks later, plant the same group in the second row. Two weeks later, do it again in the third row.

This way, each row will be ready to harvest two weeks after the previous one, giving you a fresh supply for longer, and keeping you from having to find ways to get rid of all the extras.

Did you know we're already halfway through National Mailorder Gardening Month???

Yes, January is officially Mailorder Gardening Month, made so by the National Mailorder Gardening Association. And to think I almost missed it…

Better get out those catalogs and start ordering!

When you're planning your vegetable garden, one of the things to consider is what's on the ground where you want to plant? If it's bare soil, you're halfway there, but it's more likely lawn if you haven't planted a garden before.

If you need to get rid of grass for your garden, it's not a difficult thing to do. For a smaller area, just use a sharp spade to undercut the sod and remove it. For larger areas, a sod-cutting machine is a lot less work.

Trees or shrubs are another story - they can be a lot more difficult to relocate or even to simply remove if you no longer want them. The roots can be far-reaching as well and may interfere with your garden when it comes time to start digging.

When you're planning the location for your garden, think about how much time and effort you want to put in. If your ideal spot is going to take too much time or work, you might want to think about an alternative.

The size of your garden will depend on several things:

• How many mouths you're feeding
• How much time you have to spend in it
• How enthusiastic you are about gardening

Keep in mind that you shouldn't be too ambitious, especially if you're new to vegetable gardening. A garden that's too big quickly become a chore rather than a fun hobby.

Most average gardens range from 200 to 500 square feet.

Unless your yard requires it, it's best to avoid flowing, unusual shapes. Stick with squares or rectangle as they allow for more efficient use of space. Plus, they tend to make it easier to reach everything in the garden for maintenance and harvesting once your vegetables get larger.