This year I really took the “eat local” theme to heart. Determined to grow as much of my own food as possible, I planted the biggest garden I’ve ever had in my life. I planted just about everything from a to z: acorn squash, beets, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, green beans, horseradish, lettuce, melons, potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini.

I’ve grown some of these things before—just never all at once. Having only weekends for real quality time in the garden due to our work schedules, my husband and I have discovered what a handful a garden can be—and just how difficult it really is to grow—and use—your own.

This past spring beets and carrots were the last things I planted, and by then I was focused on mulching the young plants that I had planted in late winter and set out on Memorial Day weekend. Before I knew it, the carrots had sprouted, and I knew they needed to be thinned, but didn’t get around to it. The beets popped up as well, but the weeds in that bed kept pace with them; didn’t get around to fixing that either. Last weekend, thinking my carrots were probably a lost cause, I went out and gave a last-ditch effort to thin them. To my surprise, the thinnings were attached to real baby carrots! I picked a bunch of them, and now with less competition for root space, the big ones I’m hoping for may turn up by fall. The beets didn’t fare as well. During a four-hour weeding binge last weekend, I finally got around to that bed and salvaged several baby beets (and beet greens), but don’t think I’ll see big beets out of this bunch.

Early in the summer I discovered a problem with my two zucchini plants. Advice from an e-mail list of gardening enthusiasts was that I probably had vine borers. I followed the advice—cut open stems, find the pests, and get rid of them. But I discovered that’s easier said than done. I cut open several of the fuzzy, prickly stalks without finding any borers and decided it wasn’t worth the discomfort to continue looking for them. I settled for simply removing all the stalks that appeared damaged. This must have been just enough to give the zucchini a leg up on the infestation, because I soon had several zucchini on the vine. The first few were easy to use—steamed or stir-fried. But my husband and I didn’t check the plants daily—as you really should if you’re growing zucchini. Soon we were finding foot-long squash on the vine. We ate baked, stuffed zucchini four days in a row. One day we checked the plants, thinking we had already found the big squash for the week, and discovered one that was big enough to feed a family of six. I went to my recipe file and the Internet for help, and last weekend made zucchini bread, zucchini cookies, and more stuffed zucchini. I’m hoping to make a favorite zucchini quiche and try out recipes for chilled zucchini soup and zucchini-chocolate chip cookies next weekend when I have some time to dedicate to it.

Grow-your-own devotees advocate starting some crops now for late-fall harvesting. My husband and I have added that to our weekend “to-do” list, but it’s going to involve tilling up a new bed. Meanwhile, the crops we planted in the spring are starting to demand more attention. The abundant rain we’ve had has helped create a tomato jungle in the garden and has helped the four acorn squash I planted take on a life of their own. In fact, they’re taking over the bed opposite the tomato jungle. I planted pumpkins in that bed as well, but I can’t tell how they’re doing yet, for the acorn squash forest around them.

The thing that worries me is that just about all of my plantings—except for the late-fall crops, if I ever get to them—are going to be ready to harvest at once. And it’s already started. So far, in addition to making a variety of zucchini dishes, I’ve canned 15 jars of dilly beans. I foresee weekends filled with canning tomato sauce, learning how to make horseradish sauce, pickling some vegetables (including zucchini), and learning about root cellaring. I foresee giving away acorn squash and tomatoes. I also foresee a lot more zucchini bread, and no free weekends until after Thanksgiving.