Despite supply fears, The UN’s global food price index remained steady in April from eight months of steady gain culminating in an all time high this past February. Despite the stabilization, food prices remain at their highest prices ever due in part to all time high gasoline prices, which pose a threat to the little economic recovery only some Americans have experienced.

I don’t know about you but I have sticker shock every time I go to the grocery store. I used to shop several markets to take advantage of the different sales at each store. With gas prices being so high, even with coupons sometimes it makes more sense to shop at fewer stores and pay the higher prices. And that just feels wrong. So I’m gonna stop complaining and I’m going to start gardening.

I haven’t the faintest idea how things will work out, but after doing a lot of research (okay well after reading a seed catalog with a lot of pretty pictures) I’m going to take a stab at gardening. My nieces have been tooling around in the garden with me since they were each18 months old. We’ve always been very successful with flowers but have never really attempted anything edible beyond herbs.

This year we’re more motivated than ever. With the money I save on groceries, we’re going on a trip. We might only make it to the corner store but we’re determined to have a lot of fun trying to succeed at growing our own produce. My grocery bills are out of this world and I just have to do something to save money.

I realize it might take me ten summers to undo the damage we may do in the yard this year but with any luck, I’ll only have to walk to my backyard to get most of the ingredients for most of our meals for the next 5-6 months.

We’re going to start with baby lettuces, cucumbers, carrots, celery, potatoes, beets, summer and hard squashes, strawberries, rhubarb, green beans, shell beans, eggplant and one 500 pound pumpkin for my nieces and the neighborhood kids. My youngest niece is big into giant pumpkins this year. And her grandma (my mother) is encouraging the child like you wouldn’t believe.

After speaking with the son of a Farmer famous for his prize winning giant pumpkins at the outdoor market this weekend, my Mother bought his book and a few of his prize winning seeds for my niece. “Take these to Aunt Kathy’s on your sleepover this weekend. You’ll want to plant the seeds in her front yard because it gets the most sun and it’s a perfect size”.

“I can’t believe you told Maya to plant a giant pumpkin in my front yard, Mother”.

“What? The farmer’s wife said the seed came from a 750-pound female and an 800-pound male but yours probably won’t get any bigger than 400 pounds.”

“400 pounds? It’s going to kill my grass.”

“It won’t look any worse than it does now with all those weeds you have growing. Besides, Maya’s really excited. You can grow grass any old year. Well maybe you can’t grow grass but your weeds have come back every year so I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

Maya is super excited and my Mother’s right. I’ve never been known for my grass growing abilities. But we’re sure going to give this garden everything we’ve got. We’ll keep you posted on this season’s garden escapades. And we hope you’ll garden along with us. We can sure use the help! Post your gardening tips and photos on the forum. If you’d like to learn more about gardening from someone with actual experience check out these links:

National Garden Association website (www.garden.org)
NGA offers the Web's largest and most respected array of gardening content for consumers and educators, ranging from general information and publications to lessons and grants. Explore our Web site and discover a world of gardening possibilities.

Fine Gardening (www.finegardening.com) – for their interactive graphics, slideshows and video workshops, Fine Gardening Magazine is one of my favorite one-stop-shopping gardening websites.

Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org)
Seed Savers Exchange members have passed on approximately one million samples of rare garden seeds to other gardeners. We are a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.

kd@chefkathleen.com