Brian and I eat at least 20 salads per week between us. Usually more. I roast trays of veggies to add to almost any dish and try to puree vegetables and hide them in Landon’s mac ‘n cheese, meatballs and smoothies. I love zucchini boats, zucchini “pizza bites,” zucchini quiche, zucchini bread and sauteed zucchini, as well as spiralized zucchini “noodles,” beets, broccoli stems, carrots and more. Suffice it to say our refrigerator produce drawers are woefully inadequate and the great majority of our grocery store needs revolve around fresh produce.

Brian is a rather accomplished gardener, but with springtime generally being chaos every year we’ve lived here (the year we moved in, hip surgery, Landon’s unexpected birth, hip surgery, another hip surgery), we haven’t devoted as much time to the garden as we intend. Thanks to growing a few easy things, throwing a few seeds around hoping for the best, and a lot of volunteers, we’ve managed to pull some garden bounty each year. One year we accidentally grew almost 50 pounds of butternut squash.

But this year is the year.

This is the year we truly planned, loaded our garden bed with compost and organic matter, and have started seed containers all over our kitchen counters and table. We even have a hand-drawn blue-print of where everything in the garden will go. We should have enough produce to sate our rabbit-like taste in food to eat fresh, as well as freeze, preserve, can, cook and otherwise enjoy in every culinary capacity we can imagine.

Landon even joined the garden prep action!

Since Landon’s efforts, Brian added more dirt and compost, covered and pinned the garden with material that will prevent weeds and unwanted volunteers, and erected a very tall chicken fence around it.

If everything sprouts, our garden will include:

• Swiss chard
• Red lettuce
• Amaranth
• Sorrel
• Culantro
• Slow-bolt cilantro
• Thai basil
• Sage
• Parsley
• Fenugreek
• Paste tomato
• Peppers (four varieties)
• Carrots
• Beets
• Zucchini
• Cucumber
• Mustard greens (two types)
• Arugula
• Wheatgrass
• Asparagus (the seed packet indicated it’ll be about three years before they produce)

I’m also hopeful to start watermelon and we’re getting apple trees this spring, though it will be a number of years before they start producing. I’d also love to grow garlic, but need to remember to plant it this fall, let it over-winter and harvest it next year.

We had a terrible time with pests attacking our kale and cabbage last year so we opted to skip those vegetables in favor of ones that attract fewer pests.

Nearly all of our seeds are from MIGardener, which has a terrific variety of seeds, high quality and respectable prices.