Family Vegetable Patch

First, sit down together and make a list of family favorite vegetables. Each person gets to have at least one item on the list. If there are too many vegetables on the list to accommodate in the available space, discard those that are easy to purchase in top quality. Keep on the growing list those vegetables you find most disappointing when purchased.

This will vary according to individual taste. Personally, I've never met a frozen or canned pea that I've really loved. Peas, both the kind that are shelled and the edible-podded types, are given priority space in my garden. True, a few pea rows can be quite the space guzzler. But while the vines are young a whole salad garden can be tucked at their toes. I routinely transplant lettuce and seed spinach next to just-sprouted peas.

I also find purchased carrots a huge disappointment during most of the year. In January, I'm often still pulling sweet, vibrantly colored, tender carrots from the previous summer's carrot patch while the ones in stores are like so much orange-dyed wood fibre.

Carrots don't take much room. Small patches of seed can even be tucked here and there in flower gardens, where the ferny foliage is not at all out of place. The same can be done with beets, whose purple-green leaves have some ornamental value.

Mixing carrots up with flowers offers some protection against the carrot rust fly because flowering plants, especially scented ones like nasturtium, help to mask the carrot odor to which the fly is attracted. If you plant carrots in their own space in a vegetable plot, tuck a piece of floating row cover such as Reemay into the soil around them, leaving enough slack for the tops to grow 38 to 45 cm (15 to 18 inches) tall.

Reemay is available at garden centres. It screens the carrots from rust flies, which lay eggs that turn into root-burrowing grubs. The lightweight fabric allows the passage of water and light to the plants.

It's difficult to match the quality of home-grown salad greens. A closely planted salad garden is a very efficient use of garden space, and it can be grown in a patio tub. Lettuce, spinach, radish, parsley, arugula, chop suey greens (shungiku, garland chrysanthemum) and bok choy can be seeded this month, as can carrots and peas. Wait until the warmth of May to plant corn, beans, cucumber, squash and tomatoes.

The delectable eating quality of young green beans and yellow wax beans fresh from the garden cannot be equalled in any purchased product. A short row of bush beans takes little space. A wigwam of tall bamboo canes set in a flowerbed can be used to support runner beans, whose decorative foliage and scarlet flowers are highly ornamental. Some runner beans have white flowers, and Painted Lady, an heirloom runner bean, has white and red flowers that are themselves very tasty.

If corn is a must on your To Grow list, plant it in a block of several short rows for good pollination and filling out of the ears. Squash vines can be grown around the corn and trained to circle it. This saves space and deters corn-crazy raccoons.