Anyone who has ever attempted to grow vegetables soon realizes it is a true labor of love, with particular emphasis on the labor.

For me, the cultivating, planting, weeding and watering have been relatively easy tasks; the hardest chores involved building a 10-foot-high deer-proof fence measuring a few hundred feet long around the garden perimeter, prying up tons of glacial-deposit boulders from the soil, and hauling barrel after barrel after barrel of compost and mulch more than 100 yards uphill.

Years of such toil are finally bearing fruit, and I’m delighted to report that so far this season I’m enjoying my most bountiful harvest.

Hallelujah! Lettuce pray. A bumper crop of romaine, arugula and bib, along with kale, chard and spinach, have provided us and a host of friends and neighbors with fresh salad fixings for more than a month – and it still hasn’t gone to seed!

I attribute much of this success to substituting grass clippings for crushed-leaf mulch for most of the garden – a decision I made after inspecting a friend’s garden last year that thrived on lawn trimmings.

Many of the plants I grow, such as tomatoes, thrive on acidic soil, so for years I surrounded them with crushed oak leaves, which are highly acidic. For those plants that preferred greater alkalinity I added ashes from the wood stove.

But then I learned that dried leaves inhibit absorption of nitrogen, whereas freshly cut grass can promote this necessary growth catalyst, so this spring I made the switch.

As luck would have it, my neighbor, Bob, mows several acres of meadow, and allows me to collect all the clippings that he dumps in piles around his yard.

Whenever I hear Bob’s riding mower I carry half a dozen 35-gallon plastic garbage pails down our driveway, load them in a large garden cart and start pulling in the direction of his heaps, which are scattered hundreds of yards apart.

If I stuff the barrels to the brim, and if they’re wet from recent rain, each one can weigh up to 50 pounds. I’ve filled up to 40 barrels after each mowing. Then I must make several trips with the cart back to our driveway and carry them one at a time up stone steps and a narrow, rocky path to the garden.

Bob no longer keeps horses but still has a residual manure pile, now nicely composted. Like the grass clippings, this excellent fertilizer must be loaded into barrels and hauled by hand uphill to the garden. I wish he still had horses, or at least mules or some other pack animal.

I’ve lost track of the loads I’ve lugged, but am sure they amount to at least a ton.

We also collect all our banana peels, coffee grounds, apple cores, pineapple rinds and other fruit and vegetable scraps, which have to be carried in a bucket daily to a compost heap and eventually raked into the garden after it turns into rich soil.

Of course, I could simply spread a few bags of chemical fertilizer on the garden instead of fussing with compost and mulch, but I’d just as soon switch to a diet of Big Macs and Cocoa Puffs.

In addition to the voluminous lettuce crop I’m now preparing to harvest more than 250 garlic bulbs that I planted last fall. I’ve already been feasting on and giving away dozens of the succulent scapes that appear in late spring, a seasonal delicacy.

These richly aromatic, scallion-like garlic extensions can be sautéed in olive oil, blended into pesto or chopped and mixed in with salad greens.

The tomatoes and peppers have been a little slow this year, but the squash should be ripening soon, along with blueberries and blackberries.

I’m very excited about the red and yellow seed potatoes I planted in deep furrows for the first time. As instructed I first let the eyes sprout, then cut them into sections, let them dry out to callous, put them in trenches and gradually added layers of compost and mulch.

In a month or so they will be a welcome addition to the dinner table.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the Brussels sprouts. I tried growing them a couple years ago and managed to produce large stalks with dozens of tiny sprouts.

Unfortunately, slugs discovered them before I could eat a single morsel. Against my better judgment, clouded by my craving for one of my favorite vegetables, I put in a dozen plants this spring and keeping my eyes peeled for slugs. So far so good.

Nearly all the grape vines I planted a few years ago, which were chewed to the nub by beetles, have regenerated, and the other day I spotted a tiny cluster of fruit.

This fall I may finally taste my first one. The jury is still out as to whether it will have been worth digging all those posts and stringing all the wire to support the vines.

But as every dedicated gardener knows, the satisfaction and sumptuousness of putting home-grown food on the table is always ample reward.