Easy vegetables and pricey produce

I'm just about finished revising a piece about vegetable gardening for beginners. 

This isn't a easy topic in 2500 words (my assignment).

Vegetable gardening IS easy, but...there are some basics - sun, good soil (created usually), plenty of water and nutrients, and a willingness to weed and harvest often.

So I enjoyed playing around with the Gardener's Supply Kitchen Gardening planner, to see how a 4' X 4' plot looked for a summer layout.  They're a great company, and I enjoy their e-newsletters and website, along with their products.

Gardener's Supply Kitchen Garden program result

This is what it looks like, but in the program, the names of the vegetables are shown -- very nice.

Another e-newsletter I received today from VegetableGardener.com had a story about Planting Pricey Produce.  Most vegetable gardeners can relate to this -- they want how much for a bunch of kale or red mustard in the farmer's market?  This is usually about when I'm tired of harvesting and eating kale from my own garden!  And hmm, my bunches of chard look pretty good, too.  And the baby beets last spring were excellent, too....

Now, I'm conveniently ignoring all the effort I've put into my soil, raised beds, watering, etc. as has the farmer, in addition to the expense of what I've added, in terms of soil amendments and organic fertilizers, not to mention the raised bed materials, etc. etc.

But, it definitely pays off over time to 'grow your own' --  in terms of cost, but more importantly in terms of tastiness, nutrition, and healthy produce.