By the end of July the bounty of a backyard summer garden finally starts to really produce. The earlier, “lighter” crops — peas, lettuces, baby carrots — give way to the rich ripe produce of high summer. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, corn on the cob, string beans, radishes, spinach — all the stuff that makes for great “sides” at every summer barbecue. Backyard farmers revel in their “crops” because every vegetable is grown with TLC. Yet with the cost of plants, containers, potting soils, fertilizers, pest control supplies, not to mention water — every veggie probably costs at least four times as much as its “Mega-Mart” cousin.

It does not matter. Back yard gardeners are focused on the entire process, on the whole life-cycle of the various vegetables they are gro…