If this is your first year gardening, you should probably look at plants that require little maintenance on your part.

Great choices would be the pepper and tomato plants. They thrive in vegetable gardens. Both require plenty of heat, which makes them a great choice for raised beds.

Beans also grow easily from seed. They love the sunlight and provide large crops throughout the summer, you’ll find yourself picking them over and over.

Now is a good time to plant lettuce and spinach, since they do best in cooler weather. You’ll want to harvest them in the spring months and then reseed later in the summer. Late August is a good time for a second harvest.

Wise 4 Living

If you feel that your garden is just flat and unattractive, transform it by making beautiful raised beds. Gardens don’t always have to be at ground level. A raised-bed garden is simply a planting area that’s higher than the level of the surrounding ground.

A contained, elevated garden area is deemed easier to worked and maintained than a traditional garden, and at the same time an attractive framed bed filled with flowers, fruits or vegetables is visually appealing. There is a range of sizes and shapes, from small accent beds to large decorative statements to choose from. Raised beds have been used for centuries because of the many advantages they have over conventional garden plots.

Benefits:

• Beginning gardeners can ease into gardening with raised beds. Creating a small bed limits the focus to just taking care of that space. We all want a pleasant gardening experience, and having a manageable and productive bed provides just that.

• Raised beds are a good gardening technique for areas that have poor drainage, rocks or plain old poor soil. Because a raised bed allows you to bring in the best soil, they provide the ability to better control soil conditions. For areas with heavy clay, sand or highly alkaline soil, you can grow a wider range of plants. Because raised beds start with new soil that you amend for your purposes, you don’t have to worry about solving existing soil problems.

• Weeds may not be a big of problem. You can grow plants closer together, which crowds out many weeds. Because of the lesser area most raised beds yield higher than ordinary gardens.

• Convenience – Raised beds are easier to work on. If you have trouble bending, you can raise your raised bed to a convenient height. They are elevated a few feet off the ground and are more accessible for gardeners with physical limitations.