Getting Your Garden Ready. Open up your seed packets and look at the seeds inside each one. You'll see that they are all different sizes and shapes, big and small, smooth and prickly, round and pointed. Each seed knows what kind of plant it will become. For example, flat pumpkin seeds make long green vines with yellow flowers that turn into orange pumpkins. Round radish seeds grow into short plants with green leaves and fat round radishes, and pointed Cosmos seeds will grow into pretty daisy-like flowers. To help your plants grow well, there is lots you can do to get ready.The very first thing is to get the soil ready for the planting. (You may have always called it "dirt" but people usually call it "soil" when they talk about gardening.) Soil can be very different, depending on where you live. It can be sandy, fluffy, or very hard and clay-like. Mark out the outline of your whole garden area with sticks and string or use stones. Get a good shovel, spade, or digging fork to loosen and break up the soil for about a foot down. It will be easier to do the job of loosening the soil after the ground has been watered, so if it hasn't rained recently, water first and wait until the water has soaked in and the ground isn't muddy. Then loosen the soil and use your tool to smack and break up all the big lumps. You may need a grown-up to help with this job. Loosening the soil will make it easier for the plant roots to grown down in it and lets the air that plant roots need get into the soil.After the whole garden area is done, add food for your plants to the soil for them to use when they are growing. Each seed comes from its mother plant with enough food stored inside it to start it growing, but the baby plant will need to use food from the soil after it uses up the stored seed food. Start by dividing the garden space between paths where you'll be walking and the loosened spaces or wide rows where you'll be planting your seeds. The planting areas are called "seed beds" and that is where your plant food goes. Cover the ground in the seed beds with several inches of aged manure or compost and mix it into the top of the soil with a fork or shovel. Then, if you have it sprinkle a good thick dusting of bonemeal over the soil and mix it in too. If your family wants to use another chemical or organic fertilizer, have a grown up help you to follow the directions for adding it to the soil. Now smooth the surface of the seedbed with a rake so it is nice and even. You can rake out any lumps that didn't come apart before and move them into your walking paths and stamp them down into the path. Now your soil is ready to plant and you can let it settle for a day so you can decide your garden plan.Planning and Planting. Before you plant your seeds, you should sit down for a while and think about where the suns come up over your garden in the morning. You might want to go out a few times and watch and see if there are sunny and shady places or if it is a sunny spot all day. Your parents can help you with this. Have them help you make a plan of where you'll plant each kind of seed. All of the seeds like to grow in the sun, so you need to figure out where to put the tall sunflowers and bean poles so they won't shade the shorter plants like cucumbers and radishes. It is fun to draw a garden map and the map will help you to plant everything in the best place to grow. Take the map outside to your garden with you and use it when you plant your seeds. When you are ready to plant, be sure the soil is nice and moist, like a wrung-out sponge, before you begin. If the soil is too dry, water and let the moisture soak in first. Now make rows or furrows for you seeds in the seed beds with a stick or rake handle. There are directions for how deep and how far apart to plant each type of seed on the back of every seed packet. Drop the seeds in the furrow you have made for them according to these directions, then push the loose soil from either side to cover them. You'll see that the fat seeds need to be covered up deeper than a tiny seed. A good rule is that there should be twice as much soil on top of the seed as the seed is thick. Crumble up any left-over lumps with your hands so you can cover the seed up with nice fine soil. If you and your parents think that hungry birds might come and uncover and eat the seeds, cover the garden after you have planted seeds with netting or use plastic berry baskets over big seeds like cucumbers and beans. (Don't forget to take them off when your plants grow and crowd the basket.)Now that your seeds are safely tucked in, you'll need to water them to help them come up. When the seed is nice and moist, it will swell and grow and sprout, pushing a tiny root out of the bottom into the soil and a little leaf shoot out the top. This will take some days to happen, because it needs time to swell and sprout through the soil. While you are waiting, it is really important to keep the soil from drying out around the seeds. In some places, there is enough rain to get the seeds up and growing. In other places, you'll need to have a sprinkler set up to sprinkle the seed bed regularly. Your parents or a grown up can help you set it up, or water by hand with a sprinkler wand and nozzle if you have lots of time to do it. If the weather is really hot, you may need to sprinkle your seeds once or even twice a day. If it is rainy and cool, they'll need water less often. The important thing is not to let the top of the soil dry out. Remember to always use a spray nozzle on the hose so the water falls down gently like rain. Never aim an open hose right down at your plants because it will smash them down badly.Tending Your Garden. When the plants begin show above the ground, watch to be sure that birds don't peck at the tender leaves, and protect the baby plants if they do. The best time to see if the birds are doing this is very early in the morning. Also check in the early morning to see if there are slugs or snails on your plants. They leave shiny trails that you can follow. If you see them, quickly pick them off, otherwise they will eat your young plants. Once the plants have four or five nice leaves, you can water less often as that means they also have grown longer roots under the soil. All the time they are growing, you can check to see if they need water by coming to the garden and pushing your finger down into the soil in several places. You'll need to water your plants when the soil is dry all the way to the bottom of your finger. Your parents or grown-up friends will be able to help with deciding when to water. If you live where it rains a lot you may not have to water often, but in many parts of the country, your plants will need water regularly, two or three times a week to grow well. When your baby plants are 2 or 3 inches long, they are called seedlings. At this time, they will need to be thinned. It seems mean to pull any out, but it is really necessary to do this so the plants that are left to stay in the ground will grow up healthy with lots of room to grow. By the time they are big, they'll fill in all the space you've left for them! Look on the back of each seed packet for exact directions on how far apart your seedlings should be spaced. Once your plants have come up and grown into healthy big seedlings and are thinned to the right distance apart, your main job will be to weed them, feed them several times, and water often enough. In just three or four weeks you'll be harvesting your first radishes and lettuce to eat and then a little later lots of juicy cucumbers and green beans, and then bright pumpkins along with pretty flowers. Everything will look and taste especially good because you've grown it yourself. You'll have fun sharing the fine harvests of vegetables and flowers you've grown all the way from those little differently shaped seeds.Easter Egg Radishes. Radishes are fun to grow because they come up so fast. You can plant them when the weather is still chilly, and you'll see the tops poke through in less than a week. If you make the rows with your stick in the shape of your name or initials, drop in the seeds and cover them up, your name will be written in bright green in the garden. In a month you can pull them up to eat. The seeds should be planted an inch apart and 1/2 inch deep.Blue Lake Green Beans. These are climbing bean vines so they need some long poles or sticks to climb up. Ask someone strong to help you push the tall poles a couple of feet into the ground. They should stick up 6 or 7 feet in the air. The beans can also be grown up a fence or on a trellis. Wait to plant your beans until the weather is really summery and nights are not cold, because your beans grow much better when the soil is warm. Plant 3 or 4 seeds 4 inches away from the poles or other supports. Push them down into the ground as far as your second knuckle and press the soil firmly over them.If you set the bean poles in a circle and tie them together at the top like an Indian teepee, the beans will form a leafy cave and you can crawl inside. Bean vines will flower and a tiny bean will form from each flower. If you notice flowers falling off without making beans, probably they need more water. A deep soak once or twice a week is best. Pick the beans when they are young and tender. Keeping them picked will make the plant keep blooming and make more beans. You will be able to pick beans for over a month, so you can have them for dinner often. They're good raw just picked off the vine too - especially if you grow them yourself.Tangerine Gem Marigolds. Tangerine Gem Marigolds are another warm-weather lover. Plant the seeds 1/2 inch apart and 1/2 inch deep. They should be thinned or transplanted to 6 inches apart. Tangerine Gems grow into little round bushes about a foot tall covered all over with sparkling orange blossoms. They look very pretty at the front of the garden or along a path. You can pick the tiny bright flowers and string them with a needle to make a necklace or headband. Many insects that might eat your plants don't like the smell of marigolds so they are a good flower to plant along with vegetables.Freckles Lettuce. Our lettuce seeds have been coated into little pellets that are easier to space and plant. If you drop the seeds in shallow furrows about an inch apart and cover them up with 1/2 inch of soil and keep them moist, you can thin them when they are about 3 inches tall. Pull out every other one carefully so you don't hurt the roots of the remaining plants. Now take the baby lettuce inside to wash and eat for dinner. They are really tender and good. It is always best to pick your lettuce early in the morning when it is cool. It is sweetest tasting before the day gets hot. We mixed red and greed lettuce seeds together so your salad would be colorful. Plant some seeds in the spring when you plant the radishes, and some more three weeks later to have a longer harvest time. You can plant some again in late summer for a fall harvest, too.'Super Bush' Cucumbers. Wait to plant cucumbers until the weather warms up, the same time you plant the beans. The seeds will grow into vines and they do best when planted in "hills." This means you dig up a round area about 3 feet across, dig in a lot of compost, or manure, and then plant 4 or 5 seeds an inch deep and 4 inches apart. When the seedlings have 2 or 3 big leaves, pull up all but the 3 healthiest plants in each hill. After the vines flower, you'll see little cucumbers form at the center of the female flowers and these will grow quickly into eating size. Cucumber plants want an even supply of water to make lots of sweet-tasting cucumbers. If you notice the blossoms falling off, or the fruit strangely shaped, you probably need to water more often. Super Bush Cucumbers are sweet and crunchy and good to eat right in the garden or make them into a salad with your lettuce. Keep the cucumbers picked, to encourage the plants to grow more.Sensation Cosmos Flowers. Cosmos needs warm summery weather to sprout and grow well. Each bushy plant will grow about four feet tall and be covered with lots of big, pretty pink or white flowers. The butterflies love them in late summer and they are wonderful to cut and bring inside the house. The little pointed seeds should be planted about 1/2 inch deep and 4 inches apart. Put them where they won't crowd the other plants or at the back of the garden with other shorter flowers or vegetables in front of them. When the seedlings are 2 or 3 inches tall, they need to be thinned. Cosmos plants will grow fine spaced 8 inches apart, but if you want really big plants, space them by thinning to 1-1/2 feet apart. You can carefully move the plants that were too close together to another place in the garden if you do it in the cool time of day, dig up the root ball carefully in one piece, and water them well afterwards. Ask a grown-up to help you with this the first time you do it.