According to the USDA Hardiness Zone Map, your zone is either zone 7b or 8a, depending on how far south you are. That's not terribly important for vegetable growing though because hardiness zones just indicate how cold it gets in winter. It doesn't tell you much of importance about the summer growing season. There are 3 essential elements to vegetable gardening, a) light, b) moisture and c) weeding. There are many other elements, but those are the ones you must provide. Don't let anyone make this first attempt overly complicated for you. Although yield can be improved by many techniques, attending to those three basic needs will probably result in a satisfactory crop. Consider everthing else as "extra" and learn what else to do as you go along. Sure, feeding, mulching and soil improvement are excellent things to do and there is much to learn on those topics, but do those after you have provided the first three needs. Much success to you! Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Hardiness Zone Map

I have lived in Virginia (although zone 7) and never had to worry about too much sun for "full sun" plants. It took me a long time to retrain my thinking when I moved here but I think you will be okay up there....of course it will depend on what you are thinking of planting.....Roses, Mallows, Salvias etc. will love your new full sun area but I wouldn't plant Heucheras there in zone 8 (my Mother does in Zone 5). You might try posting this question to the Southern Gardening forum where you will find more gardeners from the Virginia/Piedmont area.

I think that sounds great (especially all of the peppers, not much yield there so great to see a number of plants. But not knowing how many people you plan to feed I wonder if you will have too many tomatoes? If you think you might, I personally would give up a tomato plant or two in order to let the sugar baby spread. I did them one year (albeit on the ground), and they spread like crazy, but the fruits were really excellent, even though we had to wait until late Sept/early Oct to harvest some of them here is coastal Connecticut. I'm sorry if you posted this and I missed it, but where in NY are you? Those watermelons take some time, and the most important time is at the end of the season, apparently (though I am no expert) since that is when most of the sugar is developed. Kinda like grapes I guess. Anyway, this is just a nit, good luck, sounds great! Paul

From what I've read so far, both plans strike me as...starters. I also definitely like the U better, but that's not saying much yet. I'm making some assumptions here that may not be at all valid in your case. But, you're having trouble designing a kitchen you really like into that space. You have a lovely room for dining that you almost never use. Is the front living room what you think of when you look forward to getting home or also gathering dust? Yes, center-hall colonials are tricky, but is the way your first floor serving you all you could want? If you could somehow sell seldom-used square footage for $50,000 and the promise of at least hundreds saved each year in expenses, would you? And be happy to live in the downstairs space still left? With this sort of scenario in mind, to me the first plan makes expensive changes with absolutely no promise of genuinely expanding living into the space available. Enlargement of the kitchen should shift at least one daily meal into the space currently occupied by the dining table, but would it? Or would it just perch you guys on stools and damage the DRM's elegant ambiance? I know the bay is new, but it also looks like a former kitchen and breakfast room that underwent an unfinished transformation--that outside wall an obvious remnant of its previous life. (If you did this, how about doors to a nice brick or stone patio outside instead?) The second plan is a simple spiffing up of the parts of your house that get heavy living, so I agree it's a good choice if you like the way you live in the rest your house just fine as is. Small kitchens are greatly underrated and can be truly excellent, so once you work out the details to get what you want--excellent. I'm also guessing the coziness of your kitchen dining area is one of its big assets, so that part doesn't need to be larger. If this were my remodel, though, and if the front rooms were mostly unused, I'd be not be happy with the allocation of my space. People do find ways to make good use of center-halls without ruining their character. Those that do tend to sell very well in most markets. After all, a lot of people who like their look won't buy them because of their space-use issues. For my own list of wants, I like halls for themselves and would definitely want the center hall as a major feature--with nice views in both directions. I would not want a large kitchen, but I'd want a bit larger one laid out just the way I like it. I'd like two places to dine with different moods, but only if they were both used a lot. One would be decorated nicely enough for seating guests to dinner, but so formally that it repelled us most of the time. (We have this, BTW.) I'd want a living area that multifunctioned for daily living and allowed guests to separate--in actual chairs!--into different conversation groups. If it had to be in 2 different rooms, I'd want good circulation and communication between them. I'd want an inviting, comfy area I could go read while my retired DH watches drag races, and vice versa--he splits while I watch Design Star, (one of those embarrassing things I wouldn't normally admit to). I'd like one living space to be sunny, with doors to the garden, and I'd like another to be just right for snuggling up inside when it was horrible out. All this in a center-hall with those great corner rooms and a kitchen remodel opening up possibilities, and I'd start by erasing their labels.