Here is the first harvest from my garden. I probably picked things a bit early (although the funky skinny small peppers are supposed to look funky and skinny and small), but I got excited. The size of the cucumbers is courtesy of Black Jack and his magical manure.
The purple peppers are white inside - they have a mild, sweet taste. They also cost a bundle at the supermarket - like $5.99 a pound. I think I paid $2.00 for the plant. By the time I add up the cost for everything in setting up the garden, I spent less than $120. Some of that was fencing, which I can use over and over. The plants and seeds were about $80 total, which you can spend easily in one trip to the store, or two trips to the farmer's market. (I mostly started from plants, since I'm too lazy to do the seeds in trays thing.) And you don't have to spend that much - I have a 10x20 plot, but you can do a little one or even work with containers. Look at what Jennifer Michael Hecht can grow in the middle of Brooklyn! The main thing you need is sunshine. The great thing is that, while putting in a garden is labor-intensive at the beginning, once it's in, you can sit back and just let it do its thing, with an occasional watering if it doesn't rain and maybe weeding once in a while (you can cut way back on this, too, by putting down weed-blocking material or mulching heavily at the beginning). I'd like to claim that I have a magical green thumb, but really, it's all mother nature's doing. I just stuck things in the ground.
