It’s spring and where I live we’ve had record high temperatures. After the long, cold winter I’m ready to get outside and plan my vegetable garden. If you’re a newbie like me, it’s best to ask the experts. So meet Lynn Coulter author of Gardening With Heirloom Seeds. You can find out more about Coulter and her book at her Web site www.lynncoulter.com

Budget Smart Girl (BSG)-What are the best vegetable seeds for beginners to grow?

Lynn Coulter (LC)-Lots of veggies are easy to grow. ‘Blue Lake Pole’ beans, a standard for backyard gardeners for over a century, are easy to grow. I like ‘Vermont Cranberry,’ a tasty bush bean that hails from the New England region and performs well across the U.S. If you want to mark the rows in your garden, sow radishes, which sprout quickly and add a nice crunch to salads. Lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens also come up reliably. Peas are another good choice. Carrot seeds might seem challenging because they’re small, but mix them with a little sand and they’re easier to distribute. ‘Touchon’ is an old French favorite with a sweet, almost coreless flesh, and it’s ready to eat out of hand in about 65 days from sowing.

BSG-Any vegetables you wouldn’t recommend starting from seed?

LC-Most gardeners start their onions from sets, or young plants, because onion seeds have to be started indoors, very early, too, if you want big onions. But starting onions from seeds does give you more varieties to choose from. Potatoes are ready to harvest earlier in the season if they’re started from tubers that contain at least one “eye,” rather than from seeds.

BSG-When should you start planting the seeds (in pots indoors)?

LC-The starting date depends on what you are growing. Check the average date of the last frost in your area, and then read the back of each seed package. It should tell you how many weeks ahead of time to sow indoors. You don’t want to start the seeds too soon, or you’ll be forced to hold the baby plants inside, until the weather warms up, and that can weaken or stunt them. You can find your zone on the USDA Hardiness Zone Map: www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

BSG-What equipment is essential?

LC-What’s nice about gardening is that you don’t need a lot of equipment. If you’re sowing seeds indoors, you need containers, which can be anything from clean yogurt cups to egg cartons, or from flat trays to biodegradable fiber pots purchased from the garden center. Get a good quality seed planting mix, too, which will usually be a soilless, sterile blend of perlite and sphagnum peat moss. Seeds will germinate much better in the mix than in ordinary dirt. Then, to help you remember what’s coming up, label the seedlings with popsicle sticks, plastic markers, or something similar. You’ll need some sort of plastic covering to provide humidity until the seeds germinate. Finally, provide some bright light. You can grow seedlings in a windowsill as long as the sun doesn’t shine directly on them, which would burn them. If you don’t have a nice, sunny window, opt for a plant grow light.

BSG-Any tips for success, for example, humidity?

LC-Some seeds need to be covered with the starting mix to germinate, while others need to lie on the surface. The seed packet will tell you which is which. But even if your seeds should remain uncovered, they need to make good contact with the moistened starting mix, so gently tamp them down with a pestle or the bottom of a drinking glass. Cover the containers with plastic wrap, or with the plastic lids that come with commercial seed trays, to keep the humidity high until the seedlings germinate. But beware of a problem called damping off, a fungal disease that pops up when there isn’t good air circulation. To avoid damping off, remove the plastic occasionally to check the seedlings. If you have a small fan to move the air around, you can place it nearby, but don’t let it blow directly on them. Keep the seed pots or trays in a warm room, where the temperatures stay around 65 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

BSG-Any do it yourself items you can use for growing trays, for example, egg cartons

LC-Egg cartons or clean yogurt cups are fine, if you punch small holes in them for drainage. Any kind of flat, shallow trays will work. So will small clay or plastic pots that have been sterilized with a solution of one part chlorine bleach to ten parts water. Be sure to rinse them well.

BSG-When should the seedlings be transferred to larger pots?

LC-The first set of leaves you’ll see on the seedlings are their cotyledons, but wait until you spot several sets of the next leaves, the so-called “true leaves,” before you move the young plants into bigger pots. Usually the seedlings will be a couple of inches tall by this time. Moving them into a three to four inch diameter pot at this time will give their roots plenty of room to develop.

BSG-When do they need to be transferred outside?

LC-You don’t want to move tender plants straight from the warm house to the cold ground, so harden them off first. This means gradually acclimating your plants to the outside world. On their first day outside, put your plants on a covered deck or porch for a couple of hours. Bring them back in before the temperature drops at night. Do this for several days, slowly increasing the time outdoors, and gradually moving the plants from the shade into the sun and wind (unless what you’re growing prefers the shade). Watch the weather, too. Many annuals and perennials can go outside once all danger of frost has passed, but some plants, like tomatoes and peppers, need to wait until the ground is reliably warm.

BSG-Are raised beds best?

LC-Raised beds are great if your soil is poor, because they make it easy to add amendments and nutrients. You can also make the beds narrow enough to walk around, so you don’t compact your soil by tromping through it every time you pull a weed or pick a tomato. You can even make the beds high enough to avoid some of the stooping and bending that gardening requires. They generally drain well, and many gardeners find that they produce more vegetables than an ordinary garden spot. But the “best” garden is whatever works for you!

BSG-How about growing vegetables in containers? Should you sow seeds directly into them?

LC-You certainly can grow many seeds directly in containers. Just make sure your container is large enough for the variety you’re growing. Try a salad bowl garden in a half-barrel, with a dwarf tomato plant, buttercrunch lettuce, and ‘White Icicle’ radishes. Short or baby-type carrots do well in containers, along with ‘Ruby Queen’ beets, ‘Bush Champion’ cucumbers, bush beans, and peppers.

BSG-Any vegetables you can’t grow in containers?

LC-Watermelons and cantaloupes need room to sprawl, so they’re not great for containers. But you can grow most veggies in them, if the pot is large and it’s in a spot that gets at least six hours of sun a day.

BSG-How about fruits like blueberries and strawberries? Can they grow successfully in containers and hanging baskets?

LC-Strawberries are great for hanging baskets, where slugs and snails can’t reach them. Just remember, the baskets need to get six to eight hours of sun a day, and the plants may need more water and fertilizer, as hanging containers tend to dry out faster. You can also grow them in window boxes, where their small blooms are very attractive. Go with dwarf blueberries, if you want them in containers; you may have to order them by mail, if your local nursery doesn’t carry them. Standard blueberry plants won’t thrive unless they’ve got lots of room.

BSG-What about winter care, if you have things like citrus or bay leaf trees, should they be left outside and covered or brought inside?

LC-If you live in an area where the temperatures are freezing in the winter, you’ll need to bring in your citrus trees. I have a dwarf Meyer lemon that I’ve had for over a decade by moving it into our garage each fall, where the light is pretty bright. Our garage gets cold, but it doesn’t freeze. Bay leave trees thrive outdoors in zones 8 to 10, and although mine usually shows some damage after cold snaps, it does just fine, probably because it’s planted close to a wall that blocks the wind.

BSG-What do you think about products like the Topsy Turvy?

LC-I haven’t tried one yet, although my gardening friends are talking about them. I hear they’re good if you don’t have a lot of space, but that they don’t produce as many tomatoes as gardening in the ground. My problem would be finding something sturdy enough to hold the weight, once it’s watered!

BSG-Any other tips, you’d like to share?

LC-If you haven’t ever grown heirloom vegetables, try one or two varieties this year. They’re typically disease and pest resistant, because they’re been around long enough to adapt to whatever conditions they’ve grown in. Once you bite into an heirloom tomato or watermelon, you’ll know why gardeners say they taste better, too. Happy gardening!