Planting a Vegetable Garden

After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben), I decided to plant a vegetable garden.

I don't know the first thing about gardening. I did plant rosemary a few years ago and put it in everything I cooked that year. Still, that's the extent of my knowledge.

Well I went to Valley View Farms in Cockeysville, Maryland and bought:

• 4 varieties of sweet peppers (Big Bertha, Early Sensation, Purple Beauty and Valencia)


• 4 varieties of tomatoes (Radiator Ray's heirloom Mortgage Lifter, Lemon Boy, heirloom Yellow Pear, Grape)


• 1 bunch of yellow Granex hybrid onion


• 3 summer squashes (Raven, Yellow Straightneck, Peter Pan)


• 1 thing of Silver Queen Corn (which seemed to have lots of plants in it)


• 1 artichoke


• 1 Crimson Sweet watermelon


• 1 Superstar muskmelon


• 1 Burpee hybrid cucumber


• 1 Bambino hybrid eggplant


• Genovese basil


• Tuscan Blue rosemary


• cilantro


• parsley


• garlic chives


• and a few other things.

I'd also like to get some strawberries, raspberries, and asparagus but apparently you have to buy those earlier in the year?

I don't know what got into me. I suppose reading about Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan also had an influence on me.

Wish me luck!