Gardening expert Jon Traunfeid's "Salad Table," a portable, space-saving way to grow your own salad greens, inspired this garden. Growing the greens in recycled vegetable crates, instead of in a wooden frame, worked wonderfully for sammysplace.

Cgeb found a create way to protect seedlings from cutworm damage: by using the plastic pot the plant originally came in. By cutting off the bottom of the pot, creating a slit up the side, and wrapping it around the seedling, the pot becomes an effective barrier around the plant.

A screen house that blew apart served as the ideal supports for jfortin's garden: green beans and pea plants climbed on the outside while lettuce and spinach were planted beneath.

Extend your planting season with lovely garden cloches. Shirleyhill grew chives, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, and yellow pear-shaped potatoes, and used the covers as protection from cold evenings.

Thriftybowen started with a tote bag from the free items section of an online classified site and created a rain barrel irrigation system. With the tote connected to a sprouting and an adapter attached for a hose, the resulting garden flourished and included this beautiful yellow squash. "Best of all, I have not only reduced my public water use but also reused a landfill-destined container," thriftybowen added. "And my only cost was an inexpensive adapter."

With water conservation in mind, aprylinparis uses a soaker hose to ensure plants are sufficiently -- and not excessively -- hydrated.

The secret to rubyredcornbread's lush garden: "Most people call it 'manure tea'....Thanks to my chickens, I call it 'poop soup!' "

To get these lovely tomatoes, credd made sure to protect them from pests by planting marigolds among the tomatoes (to encourage bugs to eat the marigolds instead of the tomatoes), in addition to sprinkling cayenne around the plants.

Other people's throwaways not only added character and charm to perennialpassion's garden but perfectly housed a delicious assortment of lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and onions. Framing the vegetable garden are sugar peas, sweet peas, nasturtiums, and clematis.

Moutainjoy reaped the rewards of two tomato plants in an earth box in addition to a nice variety of herbs, such as oregano, chives, and cilantro, grown in large planters on a deck. "We get a bumper crop of tomatoes every year," said mountainjoy. This year, the plan is to have two earth boxes.

Including a beehive (seen in the corner of the garden) was an important aspect of bethanyjmadrid's new garden. There was still work to be done, including painting the wood white, but as bethanyjmadrid put it, "gotta have bees."

Compost is the answer to mjhundle's garden, a combination of wood ashes from the fireplace and coffee grounds (free and sourced from local coffee shops).

Kap4522 learned the essentials for starting a vegetable garden from those who know the conditions best -- neighbors. For Kap4522's community garden plot, it included getting a fence for bunny protection and building raised beds since the area can get wet.

Creating good air flow was key for borowski9447's heirloom tomatoes. Within large round cages, the main stems were separated from secondary ones, and the plants were pruned (suckered). The result: tomatoes that "kept growing and growing -- faster than my daughter did!"

In addition to bamboo stakes and an electric fence, mjhundle used steel posts from "house for sale" signs to make trellises for peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans.

Successfully grow peppers with a tip from SharonDKH's great grandmother: "Put three wooden matches, head down, around the base of your pepper plants. This will supply the sulfur needed for your peppers to flourish." Pictured here, Sharon DKH's romaine lettuce in a window box.

With no prior gardening experience, INAmom went wholeheartedly for an edible garden instead of shrubs: lettuce, spinach, sweet peppers, radishes, carrots, peas, beans, tomatoes, strawberries, onions, melon, eggplant, pumpkins, and corn. "Will they all grow? We sure hope so," said INAmom. "But even if they don't, it's OK. We figure we're still learning, and gardening offers you the chance to learn for a lifetime."

Quickly and easily reposition the growing tomatoes on vines with green gardener's Velcro strips. MichelleBP found that Velcro works better than other tying methods and also recommends using sturdy pyramid-shaped towers to support tomato vines.

As an alternative to a buying a tiller or expensive timber, PlantJoySeeds turned to cinder blocks as a way to build raised beds in less-than-ideal soil conditions. PlantJoySeeds is already planning to build additional cinder-block beds and to add soil to the holes in the blocks to plant pest-repelling plants.

"Every morning, sometimes even before breakfast, [our son Emery] would run out to check on the garden," said soempearmom. "It was great because he would let us know when the veggies were ready to be picked or if a patch needed to be weeded. In this picture, his basket is full of green and purple beans and green peppers. He was a great help and learned so much! We even found a caterpillar in the garden, brought it in the house, fed it and waited for it to turn into a butterfly. So many great lessons were learned by all our kids from our garden."