 Hello, I'm David Kuhn. I'm a regional extension agent with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and as part of our Grow More Give More series, today we're going to talk about garden location. Tips to remember the most important factor when considering a garden site is full sun. We tend to think of sites in our landscape or our yard that we're not currently using or maybe that are out of the way that we don't have flowering plants in or bedding plants in that we can use that as a vegetable garden. Well, if it can't go grass, if it can't grow weeds, it's probably not an acceptable site to grow vegetables. We really need a site that has full sun, six to eight hours of full sun, and we need to consider can we get that sun early in the morning until about one or two and get a little shade on that garden when temperatures turn brutally hot in July and August. The next most important tip to remember is a water source. Nobody likes carrying water out to a garden to water those plants, so easy access to a water source where we're not constantly dragging hoses is makes that much more successful site instead of trying to hand irrigate. We always want to water early in the mornings. That lets the foliage dry and doesn't leave it wet overnight to have a favorable environment for disease. Drip irrigation is a very good option when we're talking about that. It puts water right where it needs to be. We don't water the row middles and have much less disease in weed competition. Convenience out of sight, out of mind. It's nice to have a garden space that you can see every day. You're planting those plants in the ground and basically going 45 to 120 days to the maturity to pick fruit, and so we've got to care for those every day. So we need a site that reminds us, hey, I need to go out check my garden. I need to do a little scouting for disease. I need to do a little scouting for weeds. I need to make sure I don't have insect pressure going on. So if it's convenient, it's close. We see it every day. It reminds us to go out and check it and scout it and keep on top of it. So just some good examples of good garden sites to consider. The one on the left you can see full sun. Looks like the soil has good drainage. We've got a water source located next to the building there. So we're gonna see that site every day. We've got water access to it. The site on the right, again, open full sun. It's gonna have full sun all day through most of the garden. We've got some raised beds that we're using to grow our vegetables in, but just two good choices for sites for vegetable gardens. Just another couple of pictures. The one on the left is the same garden that you saw with the raised beds earlier, but on this side it gets much more shade. The beds on the left side of that picture don't grow vegetables as well as the rest of the beds that get full sun. And even the beds to the right where the homeowner tried to grow some vegetables and peppers before just really didn't get enough sun to grow optimally. Again, we go back to right plant, right place. And a plant under stress requires much more time and maintenance. So choosing that full sun site helps it grow much better. The picture on the right, you see we have a good water source. But again, we're gonna be shaded most of the day and just not an optimum site for growing vegetables. Some other tips to remember. A lot of times in our yard, we might have a place that's got good full sun, but we don't have the best soil in the world. Not the end of the world. There's a couple of things we can do to create a good well-drained soil. We don't want that water to puddle when it rains and sit there for more than an hour or so. We want it to soak in the soil and give those chance of roots some water and also give them a chance to dry out as it drains through. So the optimum soil is about half soil, half airspace, and it contains about two to four percent organic matter. So what's your soil like? If you've got a very sandy soil that drains very quickly and dries back out very quickly, we can fix that by simply adding some organic matter into that soil. The same thing goes for a very clay site, a very compacted soil site that may puddle and hold water for a long period of time. We can add some organic matter into that clay soil, add some airspace, and allow it to drain better. Even with all of that, some other things we can do to add drainage to our soil. We can add those soil minutes, the compost, add some regular top soil, mix it in. If we're still not getting adequate drainage, we can mound those rows up simply creating a raised bed without the bed part of it. We're mounding that row up four to six inches higher than the rest of the soil and providing that root zone a place where that soil can drain well and it doesn't stay wet continuously promoting disease. We can also think about some raised beds like the ones in the top right picture there, eight to 12 inches deep are adequate and help us grow those vegetables in those sites that might not be most optimum but get full sun and we have water. Again, thank you for being with us today. And as always, if you have further questions, you can always call the Horticulture and Home Grounds Master Gardener Helpline at 877-252-4769. Thank you.