Why garden?

I grew up in the South U.S. in the country. My Grandparents on both sides gardened, my parents gardened, and there was many a day I have fond, and not so fond memories of seeing and smelling the numerous varieties of heirloom flowers in the flower garden, weeding and hoeing rows in the vegetable garden, eating fresh fruit off the trees, and sitting on the back porch shelling peas, snapping beans, and shucking corn.

When I grew up and moved away to college I had a rude awakening when all of my store bought produce did not taste the same as I remembered vegetables and fruits tasting when I was growing up. I love vegetables, berries, and fruits, and you just can not find anything in the supermarket that compares to fresh home grown heirloom produce. Unfortunately my college town did not have a farmer's market either, so I was stuck with supermarket produce for awhile.

I got used to the store bought produce, but whenever I visited my grandparents I always stocked up on canned and fresh veggies from the garden, jams, jellies, and pretty much whatever I could get my hands on.

A couple of years ago my husband was diagnosed with high cholesterol, and we know he has a family history of heart disease, so we made the decision to drastically change our diet. We switched to whole grain breads and pastas, reduced the amount of processed and pre-packaged foods we were using, and reduced the amount of sodium and the types of oils we cooked with. I also decided that I wanted to do a vegetable garden.

I have had a flower garden for years, roses, lilies, gladiolus, daisies, iris, heirloom daffodils, and some herbs, but I had never considered a vegetable garden. I guess I was kind of scared and not sure I could do it. After all I am a mom of three who works full time and goes to school, but for the sake of my family and taste buds, I decided to just go for it.

I decided to try a few of our favorites, watermelon, strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, peas, cucumber, squash, and okra. Some things worked, even better than I could have imagined, the heirloom tomatoes from my grandparents grew and produced big, yummy and a generous harvest, in fact all of the tomatoes except the cherry tomato gave a huge crop. The cucumbers, okra, and squash also did fantastic.