Miles Okonkwo 
A cold night that did not freeze still cost me three weeks of peppers. What I read now instead of a calendar, why hardening off is worth two dull weekends, and the root ball I split in half.
Every gardening list tells you what to plant. This is the other list: the crops I gave real bed space and real seasons to, and then pulled out for good. Corn, cauliflower, melons, and one brassica that broke me.
I planted one small mint in an open bed and spent the next two years getting it back out. Here is how far it travelled, what digging it up actually involved, and the rules I follow now.
For years I wrote the meal plan at the kitchen table and then went shopping to fill the gaps. Moving that fifteen minutes outside, with coffee and an envelope, cut my waste more than any storage trick did.
A short list of what has genuinely produced food on my balcony and a longer list of what I have given up on. Herbs earn their space, salad leaves nearly do, and root vegetables have quietly been retired.
A tomato seedling as thick as dental floss, a shop light hung too high, and a tray of peppers that toppled over in four days. What stretching actually means, and which seedlings are worth rescuing.
I have four small raised beds and a weekend gardener’s attention span, so every crop has to justify itself. After several seasons of tracking what I actually cooked and ate, five vegetables kept their spot and the rest quietly got evicted.
After a few seasons of growing herbs I was too proud of and never cooked with, I cut the list down to five. Here is what earns space in my beds and pots, and what got quietly dropped.
A January accounting of my kitchen sill: three new parsley leaves in six weeks, scallion stubs in a jar, and a basil plant that quietly gave up. What kept going indoors, what stalled, and whether the sill space earned its keep.
Forty cells of bean seedlings on the kitchen counter taught me that most of what I was starting under lights would have been happier sown straight into the ground. Here is the list I keep now, and the three questions behind it.