Most of us want to produce good food along with all of the other beneifts of having an edible garden.

How much do you produce? Something every day? Full meals? Fully self-sufficient?

I used to joke that I was a "sophomore gardener" that kept flunking because I couldn't eat SOMETHING out of the garden every day! ...So instead of trying to graduate to the next level by those rules, I decided to change the rules!

Now TaDa!, I can happily claim that we have as much chard, kale, parsley, potatoes and eggs as we want! This is the life of a weekend-warrior gardener.

I still don't have raspberries to last a day past when I pick 'em, but maybe some new rules can get me out of this sophomoric funk... and I'll have a little something every day or maybe two things, or a meal, or ...

How much do you produce? That really depends on where you live and what you want to produce. Here in Southern NC, we can grow most of the year. In the spring I produce radish, spinach, carrot and cabbage. In the summer I produce corn, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, squash, green beans, butter beans, peanuts, potatoes, honey dew, cantelope, watermelon, pumpkin, cucmbubers, sunflowers and martin gourde. In the fall I produce collards. The eggs come year round according to laynig trends and wheather.

It all depends on if we're in an inbetween stage, as we are now, or fully in either the summer or "winter" growing seasons. Right in the middle of each season we hardly have to buy any fruits or vegetables, or else we have so much that I dry, freeze, and give away lots of produce. But now we do have to buy some.

Most years, I am harvesting spinach by now out of the greenhouse, but my big greenhouse suffered too much winter damage this year and didn't warm up enough to thaw the planting beds. I have it mostly repaired, so if all goes well, I will be planting onions and radishes by Sunday. We are self-sufficient during the summer months, but winter here is hard and we eat frozen and canned produce along with whatever fish and meat we can procure. We are in zone 3, so the growing season is short--about 90 days, but we get squash, pumpkins, root crops and greens of all kinds, cucumbers,peppers, and tomatoes in the greenhouse. We get short-season corn (Yukon Chief and Earlivee) and cucumbers outside in good years. Wild berries are abundant (blueberries, lingonberries, currants) and domestic raspberries and strawberries. We also have eggs--goose and chicken--much of the year and goat milk for about 10 months of the year (but we have to buy hay).