As Joni Mitchell put it, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” That’s why it took a lack of outdoor space to get me interested in vegetable gardening.

When I lived in Boston, I took my back yard for granted, crowding it with grills and smokers and patio furniture, letting my dog use it for his business, and always telling myself, and my downstairs neighbors, that I’d surely plant something there someday. I never managed more than a few pitiful shade plants, but on my front balcony I did cultivate containers full of basil, mint, parsley, cilantro, thyme, oregano and rosemary. As a single cook, I relished the ability, for a few short months, to avoid buying those clam-shell packs of herbs in supermarkets.

Then I moved to the District five years ago, and my list of five must-haves in a condo — proximity to work, affordability, dog-friendliness, gas cooking and outdoor space — was reduced to four. Now what would I do? I sold the gear, took my dog to a nearby dog park. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop thinking about the garden I’d never have. In my new apartment, there is not even a big enough windowsill, let alone enough sun, for potted herbs.

So we took some shortcuts, especially when it came to soil prep and weeding. We muddled through: planting a quirky mix, starting much of it too late to get very far that summer, and then proceeding to forget that we should be thinking about the fall as well.

Of course, we disagreed on things. Should we devote so much space to four mountain-strawberry plants just because I became enamored of them at a farmers market stand? We wouldn’t get berries until the second year, and even then, not many. But think of it. Our own strawberries!

Things went better the next summer. We started earlier, planting very productive spinach and lettuce thanks to seeds from Rebekah, who on a visit put in a day of sweat equity herself. We got advice from her and fellow Temple Gardeners, most of them wiser than us by far, and learned to prune young tomato plants so they would set more fruit, to water them gently at the base to prevent mold, and to weed, weed, weed and weed some more.

We learned that a little theft problem could be thwarted by picking the tomatoes just before they ripen and by growing Green Zebras and yellow cherries, varieties that hungry neighbors seemed to pass over. And I started sprinkling coffee grounds around the base of those tomatoes, to thwart non-human invaders.

Then Jane became less available for the garden, having met the man who would become her husband and having begun the process of moving away. I struggled at times to juggle the demands of weeding and watering and planting with yet another commitment: a cookbook project. Still, we grew Thai chili peppers that I chopped into fish sauce for a condiment, sparse amounts of other peppers and carrots, herbs (of course) and, at one point at least, almost more Sungold cherry tomatoes than we could handle.