my 2011 garden ... well we'll see

I tried last year and i got 2 tomatoes and 8 green beans before the plants died a slow premature disease-ridden death, and the 2 teeny weeny tomatoes were openly laughed at by my electrician. The year before when i was in the apartment i started breeding mosquitoes and gnats in an overwatered flower pot in my kitchen. Outside on the balcony I somehow fried the little herbs in the sun regardless that everything was in complete shade. Oh and 5 months ago we killed every living thing when we set off bug bombs and forgot to remove the houseplants. This year will be different, this year i will make myself proud to have a garden that i can eat out of and survive on if zombies attach (this is a metaphor mom). I already have chickens, who's shit is excellent fertilizer, and i can have eggs in a few months for omelets. Operation agrarian farmer is under way. I'm so happy.  So far in my yard i have 2 young plum trees, a young peach tree, a mulberry tree (what do i do with mulberries?), and a 15ft very mature fig tree that is currently supporting the entire Cedar Hill ecosystem (which i didn't know when we bought the house). So i have the soil for fruit trees, but everything else is kinda questionable.

This year i am jumping into the deep end of gardening, so far i have bought a small strawberry plant & some small plantable golden potatoes. This weekend i got the seeds started in a 72ct self-watering Burtpee's Seed Starting kit, which is firmly stabilized on my kitchen counter with 15cups of water and a fluorescent light. I can only hope that in 8-10 weeks i'll have something that resembles the picture on the front of the box. The seeds i planted this weekend were 2 kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of BellPeppers, Carrots, Sweet Red Corn, a lettuce mix, Baby Leaf Spinach, Arugula, Cilantro, Parsley, Spearmint, Lavendar and Rosemary. Here's a picture of the starting point. Wish me luck. :)