​You made it to the right page. Everything the workbook pointed you to is below.

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Before you download it, here are four things that make the difference between owning a study workbook and finishing one.

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1. Start smaller than you want to.
The most common way a new garden fails is that it got too big in April and unmanageable by July. One raised bed or six containers, done well, will teach you more than a plot three times that size that you stop visiting. You can always add next year. Nobody ever regretted a garden they could keep up with.

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2. Your yard beats any book, including mine.
Before you plant anything, spend a few days watching where the sun actually falls. Six hours of direct light is the dividing line for most vegetables and flowering plants, and almost everyone overestimates what they have. Note where water pools after a storm and where the soil dries first. Those observations will save you more plants than any technique.

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3. Timing is local, so look up your own dates.
Planting advice written for one region is a rough guide everywhere else. Find your last spring frost and first fall frost, then count backward from there. Your state's cooperative extension service publishes this for free and knows your area far better than any national average does.

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4. Plants will die. That's information, not failure.
Every experienced gardener has killed more plants than a beginner has ever planted. What separates them is that they wrote down what happened. Keep a page for each season: what you planted, when, where, and how it did. Three years of those notes is worth more than any book on the shelf.

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One note on the pictures. Garden photos, mine included, show plants on their best day. Yours will have holes in some leaves and a bed that looks scraggly in August. That's what a real garden looks like, and it still feeds you and still blooms.

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Now for the companion resources.