We grow our own vegetables in our backyard.  We do square foot gardening.  We have 5 boxes that we grow many items which include: all types of lettuces(these are mainly a cold crop), sugar snap peas, spinach, red beets, radishes, spring onions, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, patty pan squash, cucumbers, peppers, cantaloupes and baking pumpkins.  I have an herb tub as well as a box. In the fall we grow the cold crops again, so you basically have two harvests in one year. We buy packs of seeds and start the plants ourselves. I do the same with flowers, buy the seeds and start them. Saves from buying the expensive lettuces in the store.  We also use green bags which keep our produce fresh much longer than plastic bags.  This year we put in place 2-275 gallon containers to catch rainwater from our roofs.  Instead of using water from the spigot we can use this water instead to water the gardens.  What a big savings this is on the water bill!!  We buy bulk, break the items down ourselves to serving sizes, and reuse the ziplock bags when they get empty, by washing and drying them. Just takes a little more time but the benefits in the end are well worth it.