George Weigel

If you’re going to take a shot at growing your own dinner this year, a good place to start is by picking the crops that offer the best return on your investment.

Experienced gardeners quickly learn that some types of home-grown vegetables work out better than others.

Choices such as onions and peppers, for example, perform reliably well with few setbacks throughout most of the country, while crops such as broccoli and spinach often run into bug threats and have fairly narrow planting-time windows.

Sometimes it’s not easy making a yard look good even in one season, much less all four. Yet high on many a landscaping wish list lately is the goal of creating a yard that changes with the seasons and looks good in all of them.

The job is a little easier in spring to early summer when the majority of plants bloom and in moderate climates where seasonal differences aren’t as harsh.  It gets much harder where seasons bring major changes, and it’s hardest of all in cold-winter climates where the landscape can be buried under snow for months at a time.

Gardening is like any endeavor. The more you know, the more success you’re likely to have. Every setback can serve as a learning experience and evidence for the saying that “Everything I learned about gardening can be found in my compost pile.” One way to speed up the learning process is by taking advantage of the knowledge of those who have killed their petunias and dogwood trees before you.

Here are seven of the most important woes that our “foregardeners” would warn you about: