Your guide to maintaining bountiful vegetable beds

Skip the grocery lines and plant your own vegetable beds for healthy, satisfying meals and a beautiful garden.

Plant your greens in the sunniest and flattest part of the garden to ensure a bounty of vegetables all summer and fall, and well, so that they're easy to maintain, accessible for weeding and watering, and protected against garden invaders. How you plan your beds will help you immensely in the long run. It will save you time and effort, ease retrieval and likely prevent you from developing a sore back.

• Dig irrigation ditches between rows to let the water soak in slowly and reach the roots — this works well for any vegetable that shouldn't be watered from above.
• Make sure the water is warm to the touch; otherwise your plants will get a real shock in hot weather.
• Dig living mulch, such as clover, alfalfa and downy vetch, into the soil in the fall. This provides a natural source of nutrients.
• In late fall, enhance the soil in harvested beds by adding mulch.
• Plant aromatic herbs or flowers around the vegetable patch, such as dill, meadowfoam and French marigold, to attract useful garden visitors such as ladybugs and hoverflies.

• Pick off harmful pests such as caterpillars and snails individually. Snails tend to lurk in grass, so keep the lawn around the vegetable patch cut short.
• If bushes or hedges near the garden are infested with aphids, protect vegetables with transparent cloth or plastic sheeting.
• Install chicken wire over a freshly-sown bed to keep cats and birds at bay. Once the sprouts have emerged, use it to make a fence around the tender sprouts.
• Make a scarecrow by hanging shiny objects such as CDs or tinfoil pie plates from branches or from a forked pole stuck into the ground. They'll reflect the sunlight as they move in the wind, frightening away hungry birds.