Saving on Food: Grow your own

Growing up, I hated gardening. Mainly because the only exposure I had to it was not the planting or cultivating of all things beautiful, but rather, the gathering and disposal of a gardener's nemesis - weeds. My dad would inevitably call for me, show me a bucket and a weeder tool and point me to all the messy patches in the garden, and I would spend hours upon torturous hours, weeding.

So it didn't surprise me that when I became a teenager, I avoided the garden like the plague. Yes, there were still times my services were still required, like the time when my dad bought a truckload full of topsoil with manure and my brother and I had to spread it out all over the garden in the rain. Good times.

However once I got married, I found a love for growing vegetables. In my first condo, we won a lottery for a garden plot and I planted the heck out of that small plot - growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, salads, beans, peas, strawberries, carrots and more. My daughter grew up learning how to pull out little baby carrots and washing it with the garden hose before chomping down in its earthly, freshly picked goodness.

I've since moved houses, and now I'm in a house with a small yard so I do all my gardening in containers. I yearn for land that I can grow rows and rows of veggies, but my humble containers still make me happy each summer when I can send the kids out to pick fresh tomatoes, pick a fresh salad and more.

Being in the zone I am living in, I try to wait til March before planting but this year February's been so warm I think I'm going to start earlier, at least by turning over the soil and prepping it. I have a lot of work to do to bring the garden up from its winter dormancy. I'm hoping to grow enough to cover a big portion of our summer veggie needs this year. I'm dreaming of summer days of zucchini, beans, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, chives, carrots and lettuce...

more to come...