The one thing we all need is food. Growing food requires skill like anything else worthwhile. I myself have relied on grocery stores and restaurants for the most part. The plants I have grown in my yard were ornamental, flowers, hedge bushes and so forth.

But I have since realized that I needed to develop skills to grow my own food. Practice makes perfect after all. Hopefully I could figure it out.

I started out reading all that I could about the kinds of plants that would grow in my part of the country. Crops are pickier than I realized. Some cannot take a freeze, others cannot take the heat. Read up on your area to see what grows the best, and when to plant it. If you're lucky, seasonal growing might offer you two to three harvestable crops in one location. When one ends, rotate to another.

Everything's needs rain but really damp places can be too much moisture for some plants, and they all need to be able to drain too. Above ground beds or mounds of dirt can provide the drainage required. They're also really easy to install.

Once I picked my garden location, I began the process of prepping it. And by "I", I mean me and the guys I hired to help with the physical labor. Strapping young men are always looking for a way to earn extra money near me, thank goodness. In the wetness of the winter after some storms, digging up the dormant grass in my backyard was a bit easier. I (we) transplanted some of it, but most was just removed to get to the dirt beneath.

My husband was not thrilled with the mud pit but I told him I had a plan. So he pointed out that this was gonna be "my" garden, like I told him the dog he wanted a few years back was gonna be "his" dog, meaning he wasn't looking for more chores to do. I agreed.

I didn't want weeds so we put down long swaths of the black fabric you buy in the garden section that comes on rolls. It prevents weeds but allows water through and comes with pins to hold it in place.

I read that burrowing animals might dig up from underneath and eat my plants, so I bought garden wire, similar to chicken wire, to roll out at the base of each raised bed. Then we put together 10'x2'x2' cedar boxes and laid them out in a grid, with a few feet of room in between them to walk through.

Then it was time to fill with rich dirt and fertilizer. My cousin offered bags of horse poop but I'm not quite enough of a farmer to do that yet. So I bought rich dirt already filled with nutrients for this first season. Next year I might go with horse poop since it's free and works well. Another option would be making a refuse compost pile for banana peels and old vegetables, leaves and other biodegradable items to eventually become my own fertilizer.

Buying and gathering tools for a garden is important to do now, while our money works. Hoes, forks, shovels (both the pointy rounded ones and the flat edged ones), saws, hammers, nails, wire cutters, clippers, wheel barrow, brooms, pails, fencing, rolls of plastic, rolls of garden fabric, hand trowels, kneeling cushions, moisture thermometers, pump sprayers, hoses, sprinklers, pavers, chemicals are all helpful, if not necessary. Buy extras too.

Next we placed pavers around the beds. It keeps you from having to wear boots all the time, allows for water to drain and keeps weeds from gaining a foothold. And it's pretty. Some people use rocks or pebbles instead, or just leave it as dirt. But pavers are easy enough to move if I want to change things up and I will.

My husband reminded me that I spent more money to make a garden than it would cost to buy all the vegetables we needed at the grocery store. I just smiled and said, "Only the first year!" The fact is, I dont mind spending on this garden now, while money is plentiful. In the future, this garden, and the knowledge and experience I am gaining, may save our lives.

I figured that ten garden boxes would be plenty enough to feed the two of us. I was wrong. Ten garden boxes just scratch the surface for how much food we actually require to live, but it's a good start. Next year I'll make more.

I bought a bunch of heirloom seeds online of everything I could think of that I like to eat, and even a few I just tolerate. I bought many more than I need. They are dried and preserved in containers that are easy to save for the future. Better to have them and not need them than to not have them and desperately need them. Heirloom seeds are ones that produce seeds that you can save year after year. Many hybrid plants that you can buy at local nurseries will not reproduce and are only good for one year. Don't waste time on those.

This first year, I did it the easy way and bought pallets of baby plants already rooted and leafy. (But I did plant watermelon from seeds, because I love watermelon and nobody had it growing already.) By doing it this way, I was also buying the little containers all the plants came in, and the pallets they fit inside. I saved all of them so that next year, I can grow all my plants from seeds inside the garage or house so they get a good start before planting time, or I might make a green house for this.

I was so excited to grow my garden that I planted the first week of April. This was a big mistake because we had a freeze a week after I planted everything. I tried to cover it all with sheets, but my tomatoes didn't survive. Everything else did, luckily. I had to replant all the tomatoes. So next year, I'll wait a bit longer.

Watering is vital. Vegetables and fruits are full of water, and they need it every day, or at least every other day. I haven't got sprinkler systems, but that wouldn't help if we lost power anyway. So I hand watered on days it didn't rain. Next year I'm looking into adding water barrels that collect rain water from gutters on my house. Then I can run small lengths of tubes through each bed, punch holes in them and watering my garden will become much easier.

I chose to plant corn, pole beans, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow squash, zucchini, snap peas, tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach, rasberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and watermelon.

The blackberries, rasberries and blueberry bushes I put against the fence instead of in the above ground boxes. The problem is, they take years to get big enough to actually grow fruit, so I will have to be patient, wait and see. I'll probably plant some apple trees next year too (you need at least two so they pollinate.) The watermelon couldn't be in the raised beds either because they spread out with tendrils. So I put them in their own mound nearby.

As the plants began to grow, I noticed that some needed support to uphold their branches as they grew tall. Tomato cages worked well for tomatoes and peppers, and the pole beans grew like ivy and needed something to climb. You can lean poles together like a teepee.

I accidentally confused the spinach and the brussel sprouts, and when I harvested what I thought was spinach, I ruined the stalks of brussel sprouts because they dont grow back when you chop them. They die. I replaced them with cucumbers. Now I label everything, so I remember what is where.

My helper was so excited to see things growing that he picked things too early. Who wants tiny corn and mini onions? Now he is not allowed to pick without clearing it with me first. Each plant only grows so many items, so be sure to give them time to grow fully before harvesting. In his defense, I didn't water enough and the onion stalks wilted. They weren't going to grow much more after that. I put in more peppers to replace them.

I had a big problem with my strawberries. At first, they were the first to bloom. I was so excited to pick them! But then the tree nearby bloomed with a canopy of leaves that left them in shade half the day. The plants are still growing but they quit producing fruit. I'm going to have to relocate that bed next year. A third of my tomatoes are also shaded half the time and those in the partial shade are half the size of the ones in full sun. Again, I'll rework the beds next year. It's a learning curve. I might trim some trees too.

Bunnies love my lettuce and broccoli and ate every single snap pea plant down to the nub. I was so mad! So I bought this rabbit and deer solution that smells like bear piss and put it all around my garden. It helped for a while, but the frequent rains washed it out and it's expensive. So I tried a plastic owl with a bobble head to scare them. They weren't impressed. I felt like farmer McGregor trying to rid myself of the bunnies. Crushed red pepper in a spray bottle works pretty well.

I'm still waiting on a few things to mature, but I'm learning more every day about how to care for them. It's a lot easier than I thought. I'm going to read up so I do even better next year. When my massive tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers hit, I'm going to learn to pickle and jar them. Everything tastes so much sweeter when you grow it yourself.