Is gardening more trouble than it's worth?

I get asked this question all the time. Usually it's by people that have been bitten by the gardening bug but when they attempted to grow something that should have been easy, the project didn't yield what was expected....or it failed miserably!  I have lost whole crops of zucchini and tomatoes, nurtured a melon vine only to have it not yield a single melon...I have even lost whole gardens to a summer storm! As humans, we have to recognize that we can't control the rain, sun, or storms...or what other people do.  But when we first started driving and couldn’t angle into that parking spot correctly or had trouble with times tables in elementary school or whatever any of us struggled with when we first undertook it, we had to learn what works for us because everyone is different. I’ve made a lot of mistakes but I have also had a lot of successes.  If I learned something from those failures then weren’t they actually lessons?

Plant something, actually plant ANYTHING that you normally use in the kitchen.  The first time that you have fresh basil, dill, or even a single carrot or pepper (and especially a tomato) and all you had to do was step outside your front door instead of go through a checkout line, you will understand the passion of a “city gardener”.  Don’t give up!  Today’s world has innumerable resources, sometimes it really is as easy as typing a question into a search engine.     The year that I lost about 20 squash plants was the year of the squash vine borer.  I learned WAY too late in the season what it was and it was too late to do anything about it.  Three years later, I know that a simple spray of btk bacteria once a week will keep those buggers off of my plants.  I learned that copper fungicide can stave off that bacterial wilt which is what had previously always killed my tomato plants in the heat of the summer.  People come over and marvel at my little city garden and even while these particular plants were started less than six months ago, several years of experience have gone into getting them where they are today.  I love swapping stories with other gardeners and exchanging ideas. 

Gardening for me is about learning to enjoy the little things in life.  Yes, I can go purchase a bag of zucchini for $3 at a grocery store, maybe even organic zucchini, but it will never bring me as much joy as my first zucchini  cut from a plant that I have protected from the elements, fed, and brought to fruition.  The best thing out of a city garden is that you know what it took to make that single zucchini happen and you appreciate it so much more.  Better yet, if a child grows an eggplant, the more likely they are to actually try it and the odds are stacked in our favor for them to like it.