There are a few questions that one should ask before starting a vegetable garden:
What type of vegetables do I want to grow?
What type of soil do I have?
What is the length of my growing season?
And many others...

Here's a list of some vegetables that I have found the easiest to grow.

If you want to grow summer squash, for beginning gardeners, I would recommend Jackpot zucchini or Horn of Planty yellow crookneck.

Cucumbers, I would recommend Lemon, because it should crop well, even if grown in poor soil with neglect.

Beets: I would recommend mangels to beginners. Even in poor soil or neglected, they should grow somewhat adequately. Mangels are large carrot-shaped beets.

Carrots are not the best crop for beginners, but Oxheart and Red-cored Chantennay (sp?) usually grow well for most everyone.

Winter Squash: New England Pie Pumpkin and Sweet Dumpling grow well for most people with little care.

Beans and Peas aren't really worth it for such a small garden.

Lettuce needs such a high amount of nitrogen, that it takes a lot of work and time to grow adequately.

Creasy Greens aka Upland Cress aka Yellow Rocket grow excellent even with neglect even in extremely poor soil. The greens taste sort of like collards. The florettes taste better than most broccoli. And creasy greens are one of the most nutritious of all vegetables.

I would suggest you get a soil test from your local extension service, this way you know exactly what your working with and you'll know what needs to be improved.

You didn't mention what veggies your planning to grow but get your self a piece of plotting paper and design what will go where. Obviously the taller plants like tomatoes will go in the back, don't over crowd.

Once you determine what your going to grow start researching what conditions are best for those plants, i.e cool vs warm weather crops, full sun partial sun etc.

If you plan on growing cucs make some sort of a trellis in the back so you can grow vertically and gain overall growing space.

Post what your planning to grow and you'll get plenty of good advice here.

I, like many others start with cool weather crops in the spring, lettuce broccoli, spinach followed by summer crops maters cucs pepper beans etc. Followed by a late summer planting of more cool weather crops to grow into late fall.
Good luck and enjoy those fresh veggies this summer.

Here is a link that might be useful: link to NH extension service

Something that I wanted to add to the above list, but forgot: Rhubarb. After the first couple of years, it's roots will become established, and you should have rhubarb for many years to come with very little care. The plants usually only live for about 20 years or so, but still that's quite a lot of rhubarb.

Suzanne, last year was my first year for a vegetable garden, and mine is even smaller than yours, about 5' x 12'. There are plenty of folks on this forum that have more experience than me, but I'll tell you what worked, or didn't for me.

First, I agree with Warren about growing things that you know your family will eat, not just picking something that is easy to grow. This year I plan to grow more cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and carrots because these are things I know my family will use. I had such a problem with leaf miners last year that I'm not sure how much space to devote to lettuce, spinach, and other leafy vegetables. I grew small pumpkins on a trellis last year, and yes, they are a space hog, but the kids enjoyed them, and I got a gallon of pumpkin puree out of it. Since I only have room for one space hog a year, this year I will try canteloupes on the trellis, but I would definitely grow pumpkins again. I'm growing peas and beans, but again you will need to trellis them to make the most of your limited space. The one thing I would skip in a small garden is corn. I'm also NOT growing squash or zuchini mostly because they take up a lot of room, but also because my family is not crazy about them. They are very productive, and I would be forcing them on all the neighbors, or making a ton of zuchini bread.

One thing I learned, and you are in the same zone as me, is that if I want tomatoes and peppers to be ripe before the first frost, I need to select ones designed for a short season, ones with a low DTM (days to maturity).

As I mentioned above, it is important with a small garden to use your vertical space as much as possible. One book I found helpful was 'The Postage Stamp Garden Book' by Duane and Karen Newcomb. Lots of people use the square foot gardening method for small spaces, and there is a book by Mel Bartholomew about it. His site is linked below.

I hope you enjoy your first year, make lots of notes, so that you don't make the same mistakes next year.

Wishing you a bountiful harvest,
Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Square foot gardening

The above posters give good advice. I started of with an 8' x 8' area. I planted broccoli, tomatoes and peppers with reasonable success. My garden is now 22' x 45' (yes, on par with the square footage as my basement!). I enjoy growing broccoli (Green Goliath or Calabrese), pole beans (Kentucky Wonders and Yardlongs), bush beans (Blue Lake, Brittle Wax, and Royal Burgundy), tomatoes (anything that is under 85 days to maturity after transplant), peppers (California Wonder, Big Dipper, Lady Bell, Big Bertha), Hot peppers (jalapenos, Hungarian Wax, cayenne, anchos & habaneros), summer squash (all types) and winter squash (spaghetti squash, acorn squash, and butternuts). Oh, cucumbers have also done alright (Marketmores and Armenian.)

Most root veggies have been a challenge for me. I have clay soil with lots of shale. Despite having worked the garden for 6 years now, the soil is definitely better but still not great. Other iffy crops have been: lettuce, kohlrabi, melons, peas (I think I always plant these too late), spinach (again, I think I plant it too late), cauliflower (probably not worth the space) and corn (probably not worth the space.)

I have a few things I can't seem to weed out they're doing so well. Radishes now plant themselves, strawberries, oregano, and mint. All of these things get weeded if they are not in their designated spots.

Here's another site that I find very helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell U on Veggies

g'day suzanne,

for me i'd suggest cut to the chase hey? go for raised beds use mushroom compost and away you go too easy realy.

we ahve pic's etc.,. on how we do it on our site take a look might be some ideas there for you?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

10 x 10 seems very small, so I would say this would be one of your biggest factors in choosing what to grow. You mean 10 x 10 feet, right?

Given your small gardening space, I would say stick with things that really taste much better when they're home grown. A lot of gardenwebbers may disagree with me, but I find a lot of veggies at the supermarket to be sufficient - I can't see how carrots or celery or onions or broccoli etc. could be so much better when home grown (unless you wait for them to sweeten after the first frost, which some vegetables do - you'll learn about that as you read about gardening)

On the same note, you could also focus on things that are overpriced at the supermarket compared to how easy they are to grow.

Furthermore, you live in a pretty cold part of the country, so you'll be happy to know that there are a few vegetables that laugh heartily in the face father winter.

In the taste department, the big ones are tomatoes. Nothing compares to a real ripened garden tomato; the tomatoes at the supermarket are little red lies - they're picked green to be able to ship well and then made red with ethylene (the ripening hormone). Ethylene ripening works well for most (botanic) fruits, but it's pointless if the fruit (the tomato, in this case) hasn't even MATURED yet! Tomatoes are definitely the one thing that all gardeners and even most of the general populace would agree taste so much better when you grow them yourself.

I also find that peppers (capsicum) that I grow are much tastier than the supermarket kind. They're much sweeter and more flavorful. But I can get good peppers because it regularly gets pretty hot and humid here in NJ in the summers, and peppers need that to be really tasty.

In the price department you've got shallots and leeks. Definitely overpriced at the supermarket. With shallots, you grow them like garlic, plant the "cloves" during very cool whether when the spring is starting and the days are lengthening (alliums are instigated to grow their bulbs by increasing daylengths). With leeks, you'll need to shore up the dirt or provide some kind of cover to blanch the stalks, but otherwise similarly easy to grow like other alliums. And leeks are one of the cold-hardiest crops. You can leave them in the ground throughout the beginning of the winter and harvest as needed. You plant them in the summer to mature in the autumn/winter, just remember they take a long time to mature, about 4 months. And that increasing daylengths rule doesn't apply since the leek is a stalk, not a storage bulb. All aliums have the added benefit that wildlife don't generally eat them.

For cole crops/brassicas, I would recommend you start with collards and/or kale. Both these are closer to their wild ancestors and much more pest/disease resistant than their more refined cousins. Kale also laughs in the face of winter. And both these will be sweeter after a frost (by the way, by frost we mean frosty weather, generally when the temp goes below 40). I would also recommend radishes just because they're easy to grow and have such a fast growth rate - they're mature in three to four weeks.

I disagree with the previous poster about beans/peas. They're easy enough to grow and save the seed, they're important to the garden because they add nitrogen to the soil, and they're generally well liked by everyone and quite nutritious. Peas can handle a decent amount of cold weather, so they can be planted when it's cold, before the bugs/pests come out. Green beans/snap beans are well liked by most people, but they are somewhat susceptible to garden pests. I would reccomend you try a more unusual, pest-hardy bean, like runner beans, which have the benefit of also being gorgeous. Most beans can be eaten in the "snap" or "green" stage like green beans if you pick them early enough. And like I said, it's easy enough to save the seed - just wait until the pods are dry and collect the dry peas/beans and save until next season. And just remember to soak the seeds/beans/peas in water to speed germination before you plant them next season. You don't need to worry about cross-pollination of different varieties because most legumes (beans/peas) are self-pollinated, ESPECIALLY peas (I just looked at a pea blossom for the first time here the other day in my grandmother's garden - all the flowers parts are protected inside a flower petal shell, so bugs can't ever get to them). Also remember that legumes usually need a support structure to climb up.

You might also want to put in some herbs, which are pretty easy to grow. Mints will definitely grow in your area, as will sage, though I think you're at its cold-hardiness limit, and maybe thyme. You can forget keeping rosemary as an outdoor perennial in your bitter cold. I myself love the smell of lemon balm, which I think is hardy to zone 4, but like mint it is a spreader and can become weedy. Lovage is a nice herb that you could grow, though more susceptible to pests than other herbs. And of course the annuals parsley, dill, and cilantro (though parsley is a biennial and I think might survive winters in your are - so you might be able to save seed if you're interested)

Above all read up on gardening as much as you can. If you don't understand something, try googling it. Buy some books. I, like you, don't have much room to garden, and have only gardened two seasons, but I read nonstop so I'm pretty well versed on all the how-to's and what-to-do's.

NHSuzanne, as you can see, you will get a great variety of advice. All good, too. I remember my first garden and it was smaller than the one you are thinking about. I also had no idea as to "compost, pH,", etc. I think I would have been a little overwhelmed at all the things I SHOULD have considered at the time, LOL. Assuming that you know as little as I did, here is my advice: 10 x 10 is a perfect beginner garden, especially since you feel that it would be managable for you. You can always expand next year if you catch the "bug." I have always planted very extensively and packed in a lot of different veggies into a small space.
Generally, you do want to improve your soil. I've always tilled to loosen the area but some disagree with this method. I didn't have access to manure at the time so I bought bags of composted manure at Walmart for $1 or so, dumped them over the top and tilled them in. This loosens the soil and adds nutrients that your veggies will thrive on. You can do this by hand if you don't have a tiller but it is back-breaking work. Most Lowes and the like have tillers you can rent for a day.
I plan out my garden on graph paper. Not an exact science but it gives me an idea of what I can logically fit in and how to orient the different plants. I have always used a book by Ed Smith called "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" for reference and had good results. Once you know the spacing for the veggies you plan, you can plot them on the paper. You could have a really nice harvest in the space you mention. There are also veggies designed for containers or small areas that would be perfect, such as bush type cukes that don't sprawl.
What kinds of veggies are you planning? Lori

All good advise. A good comprehensive reference book that will tell you everything you want to know is George Smith's "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible". Raised beds will let you grow a lot more stuff in a limited space.

I agree. A 10 x 10 foot garden is a fine size garden to begin. You'll learn as you go along, and once you get it generally under your belt, people's advice will make a lot of sense. Or not!!!

I have a suggestion. Why don't you list what you'd like to eat that's fresh, and we can comment on plant sizes and needs and growing season, etc. We might be more helpful that way, since ten people could give you enough recommendations to fill an acre garden!

I would add sweet basil to the list if you are growing herbs, it is delicious with bruschetta, salmon, pesto and more.

I you have room try 2 or 3 different types of tomatoes to find out what you like the most.

Every hour spent preventing weeds will eliminate ten hours work in the future...

Can't stress enough the need for soil preparation FIRST - a test and soil amendments added before you plant anything is the best way to guarantee yourself a successful first garden. Simply tilling up a patch of dirt and planting things will almost guarantee you disappointment.

Test, prepare, and prep your soil first and THEN consider what to plant. ;)

Good luck. ;)

Dave

Just plant it, water it and weed it. It will be a blast.

Patti
www.gardengirltv.com