Getting started (again)

Last year, we spent about $170, and got 200 onions, 30 garlic heads, countless peppers (Ace and banana), a handful of yellow squash, a dozen spaghetti squash, the same number of butternuts, several handfuls of sugarsnap peas, a good amount of swiss chard, lot of herbs and a few cukes. Not exactly two households' annual consumption of vegetables, but a respectable return on investment.

Now, we're starting to invest in the new season. Last fall, I spent about $25 (can't find the receipt at the moment) on a new variety of garlic, and recently, for $77.80 including shipping, we ordered:

• 25 Purple Passion asparagus plants
• 200 Mars onions
• Alpine strawberry seeds
• Easter Egg radish seeds
• Peppino (hot) pepper seeds
• Chocolate sunflower seeds

In the spring, we'll buy plants from a local nursery for our pepper and tomato crops, along with another thyme plant and a few spur-of-the-moment items. We already have seeds for lettuce, tatsoi, cukes, squash (both summer and winter), basil, dill, swiss chard and nasturtiums; and we have the perennials in the ground: asparagus (the regular, green variety), catnip, sage, chives, garlic chives, mint and oregano.