My parents always had a garden in the backyard and when that wasn't enough, they rented community plots at a place called Greenmead, near where I grew up in Michigan. Here's the best description I could find with a quick internet search:
http://georgiastreetgarden.blogspot.com/2008/05/greenmead.html The official city page about Greenmead doesn't have anything about the community plots unfortunately, just the historical site, so I gotta go with that link.
From what I remember, the keys are to water lots (probably even more important in the south), pull weeds, look for bugs eating everything and take measures if you find them. If you think its going to be too wet, raise on mounds of dirt, if too dry, sink in depressions. Corn and radishes were very easy and resulted in a large bounty for the effort, squash were way too much effort for the rewards, if you got any rewards at all. Things like peas, stringbeans, peppers and watermelons were middle-ground effort to reward-wise. My parents always planted marigolds (the flower) completely around the edges of every plot, they believed it kept critters out from eating everything.
Certain foods I had never consumed
not fresh picked until I came to college. Like brussel sprouts. Brussel sprouts are awesome. The ones you get frozen are horrible, kids are absolutely correct in refusing to eat them, because they instinctively know that isn't what brussel sprouts are supposed to taste like.
I'm trying to talk my friend who makes his own homebrew into growing his own hops. That's something I'd like to try some day.
