Gardening 101

As I have read various emails throughout the summer, I have been listening to the joys of gardening. Flowers, vegetables, canning, freezing, and my mind is drawn back to gardening through the years.
When first married, I thought gardening was the thing to do so I had my husband dig a garden plot for us. Now he must have had high expectations because the plot was large enough to put our entire home of today in!!! I tried but thistles, stray cows, hungry horses, rain and early frost dampened my hopes of domestic bliss.
In later years, I got another wisp of desire and had H. build me a raised garden. You can imagine the magnitude of the size when my niece asked me why I still had a sandbox in our yard!!! As fall came, I got the brainwave that burning the fall leaves on my garden would keep the mess contained. Then it snowed and the leaf cleanup was halted. Two weeks later I noticed what looked like smoke trailing up from my garden. My soil was a high content of peat and even the snow could not quench the fire so I ended up burning up the soil and three layers of logs that raised my garden. Undaunted, I rebuilt only to have the coyotes eat all of my carrotts. ( I am not kidding, I saw them dig them up and eat them!!!!)
I decided, wisely, that the farmer's market was a much more reasonable produce spot.
But I moved to the Okanagan where ANYTHING grows. H., once again built me a raised plot (3x5 does not qualify as a real garden). In that space, I planted 5 potatoes, a 1/2 row of radishes and 1 1/2 rows of carrots. It did not take long to realize that perhaps our soil was a little on the rich side (plus I didn't plant it until mid June) and the garden quickly started to germinate and just kept on. The potatoes were 2 feet high, fell over and killed the radishes and carrots due to no light. They did not bloom. H. wanted to tear them out but I have always been sympathetic to anything willing to live under my care. I left them in their gregarious green splendor.
Today, I dug around under one of the potatoes. There were little potatoes. You cannot imagine my excitement. I dug up the one plant and there were seven potatoes. Well, five were large marble size, one golf ball and one small tennis ball. I cooked them proudly for my mother and I and they were awesome. My hubby listened patiently to my excitement and suggested that I leave the rest of our bounty to grow up a little.
Tomorrow mom and I are going to enjoy one of my four tomatoes that survived on my two plants that I had carefully groomed in pots. hmmmmm....farmer's market is which day?