Lots of vegetables

Part of my leaning toward permaculture is creating a better ecosystem. 

Such a system does produce a lot of food, but eating the food you are used to does not necessarily fit into that structure.

A lot of what we eat was developed and bred into something bigger and perhaps with a preferred flavor.

If you want to eat corn on the cob you grew yourself, you are probably going to need to plant the corn into rows; the teosinte that corn is (probably) descended from was more of a grass, and quite small.

You are going to need cages for tomatoes and bell peppers, because the fruits were bred to be bigger without the stalks being bred to be like trees. 

That's just how it is, and it isn't necessarily bad. 

It doesn't even have to be a conflict because it is very common that people with a permaculture food forest will still also have a fairly typical garden patch in addition.

Since we have tended to default to lawns, which are pretty sterile, if you want to convert that to a garden patch it is going to take some work.

That might be part of why square-foot gardening was so popular for a while. It didn't matter what your soil was like, you were putting chemicals in a box. 

I personally do not like that, but I get it. Honestly, if I were to decide to grow carrots I would probably need to do something like that. My area is known for it's heavy clay soil, and carrots don't do well in that.

I don't mind that so much, because the sandy soil where carrots do well is prone to liquefaction in an earthquake; who needs that? However, carrots are a popular and tasty vegetable.

Carrots are special in many ways. Usually with the square-foot gardening method, your boxes are 1 foot high, but carrots require 2-foot high sections.

Still tasty, and another way you might combine things. You could have some boxes with a mix and some things planted in the dirt. 

I can recommend books for either or both of those.

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening by Steve Solomon.

Solomon goes over many, many varieties; when I first read it I did  not know how you would ever choose. 

I realized that you don't get it all at once. So you try some varieties one year, and then you keep the ones that you like and that grow well, and you try new things the next season.

One thing I will mention tomorrow is native plants, and those generally get planted in the fall. You could try a vegetable garden, decide it's not your think, and fill that area with native plants.

There are a lot of options.

Some of them will definitely fail, and that is discouraging. 

There should also be some successes that feel amazing.

You can find resources through your local extension office:

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/washington