Growing tomatoes

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Everything is lined up for a beautiful fresh tomato sauce. It will only take a few minutes to cook, but this meal has been months in the making.

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Start seeds six to seven weeks before your last frost. For my area, that means the end of February or the first part of March. Sure, you could buy plants in April when it is time to plant, but if you start your own, you'll have hundreds of varieties to choose from, instead of a handful, plus you'll save a lot of money, if you plan to plant several.

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Paint a crate, line it with landscape fabric, et voila. I'm suddenly way less depressed about my container garden.

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Perfect for peas, and made from recycled bike wheels.

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Jamie Oliver's tender and crisp chicken legs with sweet tomatoes: One of my favorite ways to use tomatoes and other garden-fresh vegetables.

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Tips on growing the perfect tomato from Sunset.

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Roasted tomato soup with broiled cheddar. YES.

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As anyone can tell you, once you grow (and eat) your own tomatoes, you'll never look at a supermarket tomato the same way.

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There are tomatoes for slicing and tomatoes for cooking. The beauty of life is that you can cook with slicers, and paste tomatoes are pretty darn good fresh off the vine, too.

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I avoid using pesticides and herbicides around my garden. This little guy will eat his weight in bad bugs everyday, but he'll die if I start squirting bug killer every time I see a hole in a leaf.

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It will seem to take forever for the first green tomatoes to ripen. I've done it for years, and it still drives me nuts. Don't worry, unless you're in a serious drought and/or heat wave, once they start ripening, you'll be covered the rest of the season.

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Here's a homemade tomato cage that is supporting the plant well, but it sometimes takes contortionist moves to reach a ripe tomato or do any pruning. I may give the trellis another chance next year. The point is, you will have to support the plants, whether by trellis, cage or other method.

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When you transplant, bury the entire stem of the seedling right up to the nurse leaves. Here I am using professional flats. They're a little hard to find, but when you do, they're cheap and very efficient on your shelf space. This picture was taken about a week after potting up. You can see the nurse leaves right at the soil surface.

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In another week to ten days, you will see the first true leaves open (the first two are called "nurse leaves"). When the first set is fully formed and you can see the beginnings of the second set, it is time to transplant from the germination tray to larger containers.

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About a week after you plant them, you'll have tiny sprouts. Keep the germination tray moist and keep the light as close to the seedlings as possible.

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Surely there should be a tomato plant somewhere in this pizza garden?

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