Dude. I can tell you from experience that gardening/farming is hard. Its a fucking bitch. Sometimes its easy.......... but most of it is hard damn work. Lots and lots of work. Testing, trying, digging, cultivating, learning.... its not easy.

If you're serious then make sure you're really serious about trying this. The payoff is great, but you will fail on some parts. It will feel overwhelming at times.

I have roughly a 1/2 acre. We can garden on roughly 1/4 acre. We started in august. I broke ground and tilled. Half way through the first row I hit a stump I had to dig up, and it was deep. So I'm out there in the south Texas heat in the middle of august digging and tilling. i felt like I was gonna fucking die. We have good soil on top, but 4" down its clay. A foot down its clay hard pan... might as well be concrete. I had to bust through all that just to be able to till the ground and so the plants had any chance of surviving. I borrowed a tiller from a relative and mixed in garden soil from a local company.

Now theres a whole other topic, dirt. That is good dirt. Dirt that will grow vegetables isnt cheap, and trucking it in a light duty truck was time intensive and money intensive for someone who isnt rich. I could load a half yard of dirt at a time, that was a full truck load.

I tilled the dirt into the ground I had broken, then we planted. And the planting.... oh god. My wife had started seeds in a seed tray, but because it took longer than expected to get the ground broken and amended with good soil the seedlings started to die off. We got them in the ground and took care of them to the best of our ability. And it worked!!!! They fucking grew!!!! We had radishes, collards, cabbage, and other stuff. We were careful with watering and watching for insects. We decided early on to go organic, and its not as hard as you'd think!

We sprayed BT insecticide to protect against worms and other insects and it worked really good. Other than that we didn't have to use any other "bug killers" and BT is just a natural bacteria that kills bugs.

Months later we began harvesting, the radishes were first. Then the collards occasionally and lettuce from time to time (you dont have to pull the entire plant, you can trim outer leaves and the "heart" will keep growing"). It was incredible to have fresh vegetables on our table.

This wasn't even our first garden. No... that first garden was a small area in the front yard that I had lined around with stones. It was the size of a small kitchen table. We tried okra, summer yellow squash and basil. While the okra did fantastic and we got so much we were freezing the excess (very, very easy to grow and requires almost no water), the squash failed because of vine borers (worms that chew into the plant stems) and we didn't realize it till too late and didn't know about preventive spraying of BT. The basil.... damn... basil grows like crazy and its really good fresh.

Since then we've greatly expanded our growing. Raised bed in the front yard, grow bags, more garden space in the back yard, microgreens in the small front yard stone areas, potted veggies and peppers and more.

Its a lot of work. But I find ways around what some people say for gardening applications. Most websites will say to build compost piles and raised beds and garden beds with expensive materials.... i find workarounds that are cheaper.

BUT BE WARNED. Watch out for fencing, wood, and other products that can contain harmful chemicals/metals.

Galvanized metal is fine as long as it doesnt contain lead. DO NOT USE PRESSURE TREATED WOOD around edible plants. Dont use common wood stains or oils on garden bed woods.

Be VERY cautious of any products coming from China. I simply wont use stuff from there because I dont trust that they manufacture in a lead free manner.

For cheap galvanized sheetmetal for raised beds and other uses, find local sheet metal shops that manufacture ductwork for hospitals and other companies. They will be able to provide you with an SDS detailing composition of the materials they provide.