OK, some more comments, and some comments on comments. First of all, from the list of veggies you supplied, it looks like you're a good traditional home cook. Most of what you list are easy in your area, but melons are not. There are some shorter season cooler climate varieties, but flavor is often disappointing. Try them in 3 years, when you have some experience under your belt. Lettuce, broccoli, and onions will do fine for you, but you should buy a few plants in the beginning and some seed for each. Plants will get you started earlier, but you will want to plant onions a few times during the growing season, broccoli every month, and lettuce every week. This gives you a continuous harvest, and not too much of anything all at one time. Next year you will include planting some crops for canning and freezing and of course tomato sauce, but this year potatoes and carrots and onions and garlic are what you should grow to enjoy in the winter - if they don't get eaten before then. Garlic may be an issue. Most growers in this climate start garlic in late fall, to harvest in summer. You can plant it in the spring, but it will be a later crop and you will get smaller yields, and the time for curing it will be limited, so it may not store as well. If during the planning process you are getting short of space, wait till October to buy and plant garlic. In late summer, you may find some locally-raised garlic at a farmers market. This will be adapted to your climate, and may be a good source for your seed garlic. Once you plant garlic, you should always keep some of it to plant the next season, because it readily adapts to the soil it grows in, and will get better every year. Onions must be carefully considered before buying, because they are also dependent on climate and season. You need to get the right variety for your uses as well, some don't store as well as others, and some are hot or mild. Remember too that they are reasonably inexpensive - if a large part of your motivation is economic, it is important to grow the crops that you would otherwise spend the most money on. Potatoes are fairly easy and very satisfying to harvest, but are also a relatively inexpensive food to buy. It is best to grow a good number of varieties, because you will be surprised at how different they can taste and their different cooking qualities. Potatoes grown for French fries aren't as good for mashing, and the small oily varieties are the best for roasting and baked potatoes are another, so it takes some planning. Almost all potatoes store well, which makes it worthwhile to have a large late crop and a few small crops to harvest through the summer. Carrots are sometimes difficult for new gardeners - hard to germinate at first, and hard to plant at the right thickness, and unlikely to be properly thinned. They are also sensitive to soil type, which can affect sweetness and size. They cannot be transplanted. There are lots of good strategies that can make this easier, starting with the soil that you build your beds with, but we'll deal with that later. Celery is often tricky for growers, because a big issue is water, and second is fertility. it is not fond of transplanting. It would likely do well with your high water table, but your soil may not yet be ready, so give some thought to this, Celery root has better flavor, is easier to grow, and stores well, so that's one alternative. There is also a European plant known as cutting celery, which has a great celery flavor, looks like parsley, and is simple to grow, but harder to find. There's also lovage, which is similar to celery, if celery only had 1 stalk and grew 7 feet high. The leaves and seeds are used like celery's, the stalk can be cooked and pureed, but it is otherwise very fibrous. It can be used whole to add flavor to soups, but shouldn't be left in large pieces. You should buy tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers as plants. In your climate they need a good head start to give a reasonable crop. Get a few varieties of good indeterminate tomatoes for eating fresh. Indeterminate varities can keep groing and producing as long as the season permits, and the variety will give some for sandwich slices, some for salads, and some for cooking. If you want to make sauce, buy determinate paste tomatoes and use those. Determinate tomatoes are smaller plants, and ripen pretty much all at one time, so you do one harvest and can all at once. The paste tomatoes have less juice, so there's less cooking time and richer flavor. All of these plants want warm soil, so don't plan on putting them in the ground until April. Buy them a few weeks after you see them coming out at the nursery, and plan on transplanting the tomatoes into larger pots before they go in the ground. Cucumbers don't like to be transplanted, so look for healthy plants in large pots, a little later than the tomatoes. They want lots of water, even more than tomatoes. Peppers are the hardest of the three to grow well in northern climates. Hot peppers generally need less water, and stress makes hot peppers hotter. Italian varieties often do better in New England, both hot and sweet. Tomatoes and peppers will do well in pots too; one large pot of small hot peppers and a pot of cherry or plum tomatoes will be nice on your new deck. Pumpkins are easy, but take a lot of space. A good way to grow pumpkins is to go somewhere away from the main garden with a 4' string and a stake. Put the stake in the ground, tie a loop in the string, and use it to mark out a few circles. Dig out the dirt in the circle about 4" deep and make a low mound in the center. There should be a flat space all the way around the outside bout 4" deep and wide, sloping gently to the middle. Plant 3 or 4 seeds at the top of each mound. Once they germinate, cut all but the two best looking ones, and if they are fertilized and watered and the bugs leave them alone, you'll have plenty of pumpkins in October. Strawberries can be complicated, but they are a great crop. You have to choose the variety that suits your needs, and they should go in an area where they can stay in the same place for 3 or more years to get the best yield. There are some interesting raised bed methods for strawberries that would probably work well for you, the one that comes to mind is a series of concentric rings that are stacked inside each other. This eliminates some digging, improves drainage, and makes picking and propagating the plants easy. Lets talk infrastructure. Your beds should be 8 to 12 inches high, built on the highest area. They should be bordered with 2" wood, not pressure treated. Recycled lumber is fine, but remove any nails or pound them flat. You will not find cheap redwood in New York, trust me, unless it's recycled, but you may find cedar, and if you're really lucky, black locust, but if you're buying wood, go to a decent lumberyard and get #3 2x10 softwood, and you will be fine for a few years. Don't worry about getting nice clear lumber, bows and knots and cracks are fine, and will save you a lot of money. Don't build frames wider than 4 feet. You will have to build paths in the bed if you do, and the most economical way to use framed raised beds is to only use them for growing things, and not for walking. Make the paths between the beds wide enough at least for a lawn mower. If your husband is going to work in the garden with you, the beds should not be wider than the combined length of both your arms, so you can reach the stuff in the middle easily. When you are on opposite sides of the bed, you should be just able to hold hands. If you are dedicated to a long-term garden, look for plastic composite decking boards. They will last many years, and are easy to re-build with somewhere else if you or the garden move. Masonry is the most permanent of all. Wire mesh at the bottom of the bed can be an advantage, 1/2 inch is fine. If you put down cardboard first, you won't have to dig up the grass. If you are going to spend any money, spend it on the soil you use to fill the beds. Buy it by the yard and have it delivered. If you can get it while the ground is frozen the truck may be able to dump it close to where you need it. You should be starting a compost pile now. I would put it just behind the apple trees. Take a good strong leaf rake and really rake your lawn vigorously, and you will have a lot of material to add your kitchen scraps too, and the grass will grow better, too. Compost should be a major part of your planning, it is free fertility, one of the best ways to improve your soil, and saves trips to the dump. It's one of the few gardening activities you can enjoy all year, and for many people it really is enjoyable. And gunnersm8 is right, a garden will increase your property values, feed you well for the least money, keep you healthy and tanned and satisfied with your creation, and make your backyard more beautiful and productive. As your son grows, a garden becomes a school. He'll learn geometry and basic math, ecology, biology, chemistry, history, English, and philosophy if it becomes a passion for him. Gardeners tend to be life-long learners, and are frequently very generous and optimistic, and view their world with gratitude and reverence. It's where we started.

You will need to judge the watering needs according to how your plants are growing and responding and how the soil feels to you (physically). Personally, I believe in watering deeply, but less frequently....but the number of times per week will depend entirely upon the time of year, amount of sunlight, maturity of the crop, and the temperature. We can't tell you how often...that depends upon the conditions that YOU have. Just make sure that when you do water, it's for a long enough time to actually get down into the root system, not just dampen the top. The straw is to keep weeds down and preserve soil moisture, prevent water and wind erosion, aide in water percolation, etc. I'd put it everywhere.

My garden is very limited on size and also because of it being my parents house I am limited to some extent on what I can do. If it was down to me I`d turn the whole back garden into a vegetable patch leaving paths where necessary. I could buy bigger pots but Ive already spent a lot of money on containers and compost this year and the total just keps adding and I have to stop with it somewhere along the line. The majority of my plants are in grow bags and the pumpkin plant was planted into the ground at the weekend even that was hard finding space for that. I wasnt planning on keeping the tomatoes I was going to sell the ones that are in 2l pots but I ran into problems with them which I have overcome now but I have no selling point, whereas I can give away as many tomatoes as I can grow. Im not to worried about yield with the 2l pots because I have a plentiful supply for myself and my family with what is grown in the grow bags. The large brown containers have onions in them and the smaller clay pots have leeks in them. This year is really more of an experimentation for me to see what plants best suit my garden, where theyre suited etc as I havent grown veg here before. I did have a large plot of land which belonged to a relative of mine but that has been sold now. Allotments are also very difficult to get round here and the waiting list is as long as my arm. Thanks for your comments, Mike

Alisande, summer squash (Butterstick), bell peppers (several diff), pole beans (Kentucky Blue), more bell peppers, Cucumber (Bush Champion), tomatoes (eight diff) and some icicle radishes that really can't be seen. The trellises are Cattle Panel and 8' T-post. saintpfla, the narrow beds were all determinate tomatoes, and the far end looking down the lake was indeterminate maters. I used 7 & 10 gallon containers. Remember that this was my first year in containers and I did have some moisture retention problems, too much moisture! In an attempt to save a few bucks I used Jungle Growth Professional Flower and Veggie mix, which is designed as a bedding mix, not a potting mix...doesn't really wick in a pot, DUH! Slowed the maters down initially but once they took off it actually worked quite well but the peppers were another story.... I'll be making Al's mix for the next season