Q&A for How to Grow Your Own Food

Tomatoes, beans, peppers, and potatoes are the easiest. Those are four vegetables that are great for cultivating if you're just starting out.

You can talk to local horticulturalists, garden centers, or planting groups.

Vining vegetables can be cultivated with a trellis, which is an interconnecting structure of wood with holes all over so the vine can wrap around it. Single vining vegetables can also be staked with a pole so that the vine grows around the pole.

My mom used to hang pie tins to shine as the wind blew to scare birds away. Also try collecting hair when anyone gets a trim and use it around the border of your garden. Animals don't like the smell of humans so they stay away. Save your egg shells and crush them to scatter around the bottoms of your plants to provide nutrients as well as protection from snails and slugs.

Each variety has its own requirements. Summer crops should be planted in late spring (or late winter, if started indoors). Spring crops in late winter; fall crops in late summer.

"Growing as a vine with climbing or trailing woody stems." Plants that do this usually have sticks or wood planks placed into the ground next to them so the vines from the plant can grow around the sticks for support.

Each crop has its own requirements. In general, a garden needs about two inches of water per week. Use a rain gauge to see if you get enough rain, and then augment with hand- or sprinkler-watering if necessary.

Some people let the land rest every seventh year. However, the land does not need to rest at all if every year you adequately replenish the soil with nutrients through fertilizer or compost and follow other good soil-building practices such as mulching, cover-cropping and erosion control.