Do you have a vegetable garden?

We have a huge garden. I love to do canning and freezing. It is a great workout, too! I have a Bodymedia this year and I'm amazed at the calorie burn.

I see several people grow mint - can I ask what you all do with it? Mint grows wild here, and mostly I just run it over with the lawnmower, but the kids sometimes will pick some to chew.

It's used to make tabouleh and mojitos. It's good to make dressings or as an addition to salads. But it also helps deter some garden pests so some people plant it for that purpose alone.

For me the work outs come in the forms of digging in the spring. I turn all the soil and break the ground for new plots by hand. Then I hand water with a large bucket or gallon jugs through out the summer as not to knock of flowers or veggies and to make sure the water gets all the chlorine out before I water. It also makes it easy to fertilize when needed. My best spring summer and fall outdoor work is mowing the lawn. I always get a great workout from pushing the mower to emptying the grass bag every few minutes. I've already lost my winter weight so it must be working

Oh to grow year round. Very nice! We have super wet and sometimes frozen winter days here on the NW Oregon coast so growing outdoors isn't an option November through April. I think I would miss the winter if we didn't have it but to grow all year might just make up for the loss.

I have a small garden plot. I grow zucchini, rhubarb and lots of tomatoes and peppers for salsa

I had to buy another 4-5 plants because mine died off...and the ones that have survived are smaller and barely hanging on. It's been averaging 60-70s so I'm sure that's a factor.

Yes, 220 x 140 ft, including a greenhouse.

My gardens have taken over my yard. Quite literally, our entire front yard has been turned into an edible landscape this Spring. What started out as an occasional hobby and a few raised beds has turned into a passionate venture. And gardening is no joke when it comes to workouts. Lifting, squatting, lunging, stretching, edging, raking, shoveling, all the walking, etc. I am dead to the world by the end of the day...and I notice I get a much better night's sleep when I work in the gardens. Like the OP said...it IS therapy! There is a joy to gardening, unlike running or spin classes, for me. The bonus is sharing the works of your labor with friends and neighbors throughout the season.

I have in my collective vegetable and herb gardens:

19 varieties of mostly heirloom tomatoes
6 types of summer squash/zucchini
purple and blue potatoes
6 varieties of dry cooking beans (1 bush)
6 varieties of snap beans (4 bush)
8 varieties of sweet peppers (pimento, chocolate, orange, green, yellow monster, purple, red, albino)
8 types of Hot Peppers (cayenne, jalapeno, aurora, cherry, tequila sunrise, annaheim, ancho, Hungarian wax)
Ground Cherries, Giant Cape Gooseberries and Tomatillos
3 types of spinach (one is a climber called Malabar)
8 types of wonderful lettuce (mesculin mix, romaine mixes, butterhead, freckles...)
7 types of strawberries (you can never have enough!) (Honeoye, pineberry, jewel, yellow alpine, Winona, Earliglow, everbearer)
red, Vidalia and yellow onions
5 varieties of basil
2 types of oregano
2 Parsley
4 varieties of Nasturtiums
dill, cilantro, tarragon, sweet mace, sweet marjoram, lavender, German chamomile, lemon balm, Echinacea, 3 types of bee balm
6 winter squash (acorn, Jahrdale (sp?) and another small pie type, blue hubbard, red warty, jack b little)
3 melons (cantaloupe, sugar baby watermelon, moon and stars)
12+ varieties of sunflowers
3 types of peas
5 types of carrots
fennel, radishes, parsnip, broccoli, white and purple cauliflower, Brussels sprouts,
5 types of cucumber (jelly melon, Mexican gherkin, lemon cuke, straight 8, and one popular pickling cuke)
3 types of okra (2 green, 1 red)
collards, 3 types of edible kale, giant red mustard, turnips, green cabbage, baby bok choi
sweet potatoes (we started the slips this winter from potatoes we grew last year)
Black beauty eggplant, pumpkin on a stick, Malaysian eggplant
Altrei Coffee (it is a lupin that is grown as a coffee replacer)
4 types of Amaranth
mini indian corn (not edible, but dang it they are so cute!)
rhubarb, horseradish, chives
artichoke
5 or more varieties of chard
Chocolate Mint and Spearmint

Trees/Bushes/Vines:

2 Grapes (White and Red for fresh eating)
6 Kiwi (4 types/ 2 males)
2 Asian Pear trees
4 Cherry Trees (Rainier, Bing, Montmorency, and a yellow cherry (forgot the name))
2 Apple (Winesap, Honeycrisp)
4 Plum (Yellow, Weeping Red, Purple, and a nectaplum)
1 Sweetpit Apricot
a patch of thornless Blackberries
a patch of Tayberries and yellow raspberries
2 Flat Wonderful Peach trees
1 American Serviceberry
2 Hazelnut
1 Crabapple

And this doesn't begin to cover my perennial flower beds, ornamental and shade trees. Like I said...it's a passion! And I do this on 2/3 of an acre. :0)

I've been growing a fine garden for the past 4-5 years, but unfortunately, this year, I'm injured, SO with a lot of help from pinterest, facebook, and friends, I've got a small container garden on and around my back porch. Roma and Champion tomatoes, butter leaf and red sail lettuce, butternut, spaghetti, and yellow crookneck squash, sugar snap peas, and an eggplant in a topsy turvey because hey why the hell not.

We also have a gravenstien apple tree, a winter apple tree, comes in handy for makin pies for the holidays, a multi-splice apple with northern spice, red gravenstien, and honey crisp, a shiro plum tree, an absolutely worthless pear tree, and concord grapes.

I have a vegetable garden with : 5 types of tomatoes, sweet potatoes, white and red onions, squash, pole beans, 4 types of peppers, red cabbage, watermelons, cantaloupe and eggplants.

I also have a little berry garden with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.

yes, i built my first ever veggie garden on the side of the house last year. the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant did quite well. I also grew sweet butter lettuce, kale, bok choy & rainbow swiss chard but the bugs got to them (all but the chard. i guess they did not care for it) for some reason my cucumbers and zucchini did not survive. planted corn and it grew well but i never read up on when to harvest and unfortunately it got mealy by the time i picked it.

This year i would like to stick with the easy ones which for me were tomatoes, peppers & eggplant. also want to try some root veggies this time....and I might try cucumbers again because i love them.

edit: oh i forgot about my strawberry plants. those were a bust. I saw bees polinating them daily so i'm not sure what went wrong. I only got one substantial sized berry to grow and it rotted before i picked it. i think i am going to try them again.

I used to, but the produce went to waste, the garden was taken over by weeds, and it became more of a pain than a pleasure.

Now I'm happy to support local farmers by buying what I can from the farmer's market, and I've turned my patch over to perennials (bulbs mostly).

I do have some volunteer beans coming up, on account of how terrible I was at harvesting last year, and how many of them fell in the soil and then survived being tilled this spring, and merrily sprouted. I'm going to experiment to see how well they do with literally zero input. No weeding, no watering. I might put down a trellis for them to grow up, since that requires minimal effort on my part.

In the past I've grown carrots (some so big you couldn't get your hand around... first year, when I was still gung-ho), Roma tomatoes, beans & peas. I tried watermelon one year (I live in a cold zone) and ended up with exactly one fruit, about 3.5" across, all white on the inside but surprisingly tasty despite the colour. Tried squash last year, but nothing got past the flower stage. I've done cukes (came out bitter). Grew corn one year, it grew all right but wasn't very good. Peppers that produced plenty of flowers but no fruit.

So my lesson in vegetable gardening is that I don't have the commitment to keep on it for a full summer, and the produce I can buy are much tastier than what ends up growing in my garden.

My garden is in! I love to grill vegetables in the summer. Another one of our favorite dishes is a spaghetti squash with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, and cheese bake.

I also put in a small herb garden. I've never grown herbs before, but found a nifty idea on Pinterest using concrete blocks for the herbs. I've got the following in my herb garden:

sage
a couple different basils
cilantro
garlic
mint
rosemary
lavender
thyme
fennel

My vegetable garden has:

Tomatoes--8-10 varieties (25 or so plants total)
sweet peppers
jalapeno peppers
sweet banana peppers
hungarian wax pepper
eggplant
zucchini
yellow summer squash
spaghetti squash
cucumbers
sugar babies watermelon

I can't wait to start getting some fresh produce!

yes, i built my first ever veggie garden on the side of the house last year. the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant did quite well. I also grew sweet butter lettuce, kale, bok choy & rainbow swiss chard but the bugs got to them (all but the chard. i guess they did not care for it) for some reason my cucumbers and zucchini did not survive. planted corn and it grew well but i never read up on when to harvest and unfortunately it got mealy by the time i picked it.

I've had problems with pests getting into my greens before, I lost a whole crop of brussle sprouts to afids (sp?) before I knew what was happening. Next year if you decide to grow more greens, after you water them, sprinkle them with wood ash, it's an old trick I leaned, works great for me, I do the same for my roses too. So far as the corn goes, seperate a small part of the husk and silk, home grown corn won't always grow all the way up the cob, so if the kernel looks large and ripe, press your thumb nail into it, if it squirts corn juice at you, it's ripe and juicy and ready to eat. If it's gotten over ripe and a little tough, blanch the corn in boiling water, shave it off the cob, and freeze it freezer bags of vacuum sealed, when you want corn in the winter, just pop it in the pot with a tab of butter, better than creamed corn IMO, and better for you!