Eatocracy's Managing Editor Kat Kinsman attempts to vegetable garden on a roof deck in Brooklyn, NY in USDA Hardiness Zone 6b. Feel free to taunt, advise or encourage her efforts as this series progresses.

I have a rotten knack for turning any pleasurable pastime into an exhausting and pricey project and in doing so, sucking all the joy and fun out of it. Gardening is no different.

It started in college as a cheap, meditative hobby that kept me grounded in the midst of academic mayhem, and occasionally introduced a vitamin or two into my ramen-based body. The undertakings grew grandiose and far less calming as I got older and set down roots in futon-free apartments with my name actually on the lease.

What was once a matter of nestling dollar store seeds into soil-filled buckets on the roof, or poorly deer-proofing my $15-per-year community garden plot next to the town's sewage treatment plant, became an expensive indulgence. Then it became an obligation.
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Bees, bees, everywhere! 50,000 of them - on purpose.

Table 45 in the Cleveland InterContinental Hotel is nourishing a beehive on top of their building in an effort to eat more locally-grown food.
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Eatocracy's Managing Editor Kat Kinsman attempts to vegetable garden on a roof deck in Brooklyn, NY in USDA Hardiness Zone 6b. Feel free to taunt, advise or encourage her efforts as this series progresses.

Very early one summer morning, my husband crept into my home office, and was alarmed to find two rabbits staring at him. It wasn't the lagomorphic presence that rattled him - just that there should have been a third pair of eyes blinking back.

He ducked down and peered deeply into the cluster of old potato chip boxes that Claudette had fashioned into into a makeshift warren. No bunny. It was then he noticed that the dog fence cordoning off her living quarters had been nudged apart just wide enough to let her tiny body slip through. She'd made a break for it, and there was only one place she could have gone.
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There are lots of reasons to grow your own food. It’s cheaper, safer, healthier, better for the environment, and even reduces stress.

So this year, we challenge you to grow one thing for your dinner table: Herb, vegetable, fruit … just one thing that you cultivate yourself.

Whether you're using a rooftop, countertop, or community garden, if you're blessed with full sun or none, we invite you to join the iReport kitchen garden club - and chronicle your successes and foibles through photos and video.

We'll all learn together.

Let's get started! See the garden assignment on iReport.
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