From my limited gardening experience, it seems as though you need to plant lettuce and other greens you want to eat all summer consecutively...because once you harvest a mature head of lettuce, that's it.  Unless you plant more seeds, you are done.  So gardening, like meal preparation, is an ongoing activity. But oh, the rewards of fresh!

Speaking of farm shares, which is a great idea, if you haven't paged through Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, it's an engaging look at how one family attempts to grow everything they eat over the course of a year.

What strikes me, and what I've seen written about before regarding farm shares, is how  the more unique vegetables you might receive from a share, particularly in early spring, or the vegetables you might grow when the season begins, is a wonderful exercise for creative cooks.

I, for one, am mystified by kale, mustard greens, collard greens and anything else that resides in that part of the produce case.  Making a point to pick up those unfamiliar veggies and learning how to prepare them can be very satisfying.  They also tend to fill in the gap between the more familiar, like summer berries, and that time of year when you're struggling to find a new way to serve broccoli.