Tomatoes: the gateway vegetable (or fruit)

The porch garden started with a single tomato plant, bought at Meijer and planted in a big plastic pot on my porch. I live in a condo, so planting in the ground isn't an option here, but I have a big porch that gets lots of sun. This first tomato plant was nothing spectacular, and maybe only yielded about 10 medium-sized tomatoes for the season, and I really had no idea what I was doing. I just watered it and hoped for the best. The next year I bought a cherry tomato seedling and planted it in an Earthbox that my mother-in-law gave me, and this happened:



This was the craziest tomato plant I had ever seen! Even though I still really had no idea what I was doing and couldn't say for sure why this plant was so successful, I was hooked on vegetable gardening. I saved seeds from that plant (more on seed-saving later) and bought seeds for more tomatoes, bell peppers, basil, parsley and snap peas. I read up on seed starting and started my own seeds for the first time in the spring.



The garden filled my whole porch and I started to realize that you can really grow a lot of food with no land at all.

Now I've got about 16+ containers on my porch and patio and have grown eggplant, several varieties of tomatoes, bell peppers, sweet peppers, peas, beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, rosemary, and oregano.

I still wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I learn a little every year and that's a huge part of why I like doing it.


Mother nature is the best teacher, and there's a lot of trial and error in gardening. But, here are a few books that have also been helpful to me in the learning process:

The Gardens for All Book of Tomatoes (I learned almost everything I know about seed starting and growing tomatoes from this book. It's old-school, but gardening isn't new, so why not learn from the past?)

The Gardens for All Book of Eggplant, Okra & Peppers (Some of the same info as their tomato book, but a good resource for growing peppers or eggplant. I haven't tried okra yet.)

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers (The best book on container gardening that I've found. It has pretty much everything you need to know, including which types of plants grow well in containers.)

The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook: Make the Most of Your Growing Season (This one is not geared specifically toward container gardening, actually most of it is not, but I love the way it's organized by week.)



Happy gardening!

Is it spring yet?

Spring has been stubbornly refusing to take hold here, so this year I love it even more that I have little green seedlings growing indoors. I have a little bit of spring to look at, even though the view out the window still looks barren.



But that's not the only reason I start my own seeds instead of buying seedlings. I do it because I am crazy and I like to do things the hard way. True story. But, I also do it because I love engaging in the whole process from seed to garden to harvest. Plus there are so many unusual varieties of veggies available in seed catalogs and online. Yeah, I can't be satisfied with tried-and-true standard variety vegetables, I have to have black tomatoes, purple carrots and rainbow sweet peppers. Because I have such a small garden space (my front porch) I like different varieties of veggies and herbs to add color and shape, instead of planting a lot of flowers, which would take up valuable food-growing space. This is my 5th year starting my own seeds and I'm still experimenting with different varieties. I have found a few favorites (like black cherry tomatoes!), but my guess is I'll forever be experimenting and searching for weird seeds to try.