Eight years ago, 52-year-old flight attendant Louise Tremblay thought she had finally found her dream home tucked into the woods in the Quebec countryside. But, as she attempted to draw a relaxing bath her first night in the house, she realized quickly that something was amiss. The tub filled a scant two inches and she realized to her horror that she had poured her entire life's savings into a home with no viable source of water. The house, as it turned out, had been built atop an old garbage dump.

The nearest neighbor was unwilling to work with her to fix the shared, faulty well and city officials would not allow her to dig a new one. Drained of financial resources, she looked around to take stock of her surroundings. "I had my garden to keep me alive," she said. "I had my vegetable garden to keep me healthy."
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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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Too broke? Too busy? Too...nope. We're having none of that. This is the year you garden.

Watch Eatocracy on CNN Newsroom every Wednesday at 12:45 ET.

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.

This year, you'll grow your own food. Not all of it and probably not even most or much of it. But you'll grow some, and that's going to change your life.

There are plenty of reasons to do this. Andrew Zimmern told us just this week that. "If everyone grew what they could, supported urban farms and community gardens in cities and local CSAs, the pressure relief on our overtaxed system would be immense. The resulting dollar shift would be staggering and deliver a positive shot in the arm to local economies. Our food would also be safer. Small action here can yield tremendous impact, immediately."

That's awfully compelling - and pretty intense. Perhaps start small. Grow an herb you are sick of having to pay money for at a store. Grow a vegetable that reminds you of how a grandparent's kitchen smelled. Grow a fruit you always want to have at your fingertips. Grow an ingredient that will make your sauce, stew, soup or salad taste the way it did when you had it at that little cafe in Rome, France, Mexico City or Des Moines.
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When I stroll through the aisles of my local garden center in early March, I feel like "The Jerk," Navin R. Johnson.

"The only thing I need is this packet of Big Boy Hybrid tomato seeds. I don't need anything else. Just these Big Boy Hybrid tomato seeds... and those yellow squash seeds. The Big Boy and the yellow squash seeds and that's all I need... and these Royal Burgundy bean seeds. The tomato, squash, and bean seeds and that's all I need...I don't need one other thing, not one... oh, I need these Clemson Spineless okra seeds."

Every year at this time, this home gardener itches to pull the wool mittens off of his green thumbs. The best scratch is a trip down to my local plant palace, Merrifield Garden Center. During spring, I visit Merrifield so often, I might as well endorse my paychecks straight to them – not because it's expensive, but because I always want to grow what they've got.  And when it comes to seeds, they've got it all. From aubergines to zucchini and everything in between.
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Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell are the owners of Beekman 1802. Take a peek at life on their farm at beekman1802.com

When we first bought Beekman 1802 Farm, the only heirloom vegetables we’d ever heard of were heirloom tomatoes. But a welcome-wagon meeting with one of our neighbors changed all of that. Half-a-mile down the road from us lived the owners of Landreth Seed Company, and we soon learned that every kind of vegetable seed carries with it a little bit of history.

Before long our vegetable garden was sprouting with over 100 different varieties of heirloom seeds – peas, beans, lettuce, carrots, cabbages, and nearly any other kind of vegetable you’ve ever tried. Or haven’t tried.
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Come summer, it’s not unusual for me to fall apart during dinner and shed a few tears. No, there’s need for cheering up, thank you, but please pass the tissues.

The waterworks come courtesy of cowhorn peppers growing contentedly in a big flower pot outside my window and burning my mouth to a crisp every time I take a tiny bite out of one or add a sliver to my favorite sauce.

I’m not a spicy food person. I know a lot of people will go out of their way to order anything with the “hot” symbol on the menu, but I’m not one of them. I have a low tolerance for it and I’ve never been big on breathing fire at dinner.

Yet here I am, choosing to turn all red and teary-eyed during home-cooked meals - something I wouldn’t dare do in a restaurant.
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Linda Petty is an editor at CNN Living. She likes boxed mixes, tarted-up vegetables, letting produce rot in her crisper, eating breakfast at her desk, raiding your pantry, ice cream cones and other frozen delights.

When you’re a child and you don’t like a certain vegetable there are ways to avoid it. Refuse to eat it - hide it in pockets or under plates or feed it to the dog. But when your spouse grows that vegetable with love and serves it up with their own two hands – you are stuck with gagging that ingredient down and smiling while you eat it.

However, one fellow I used to work with bragged about how he made certain that he never had to eat another one of his wife’s homegrown eggplants. Let’s call him "Max" so he doesn’t have to go into the Husband Protection Plan.
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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.

My edible loofah won't fruit, and there doesn't seem to be a darned thing I can do about it. For that matter, I can't stave off daikon bolt, keep my African Guinea Flint corn from slumping or save my white bush scallop squash from the indignity of slug consumption.

This is mostly my fault, and I have to live with it. I could have just laid down to drown in a deluge of Netflix-streamed episodes of Battlestar Galactica, taken up yogalates or just napped like a normal person, but no, not me. As a friend recently pointed out to me, I use any scrap of down time I have to assign myself an extra job.
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