I wonder if you realize that tomatoes are one of the most popularly grown ‘vegetables’ in a home gardener’s garden? Let’s clarify statement. Firstly, tomatoes are not ‘vegetables’ but ‘fruit’. That’s right, they are fruit of a vine and secondly it is widely known that most home gardeners will plant tomatoes.

Following are some home tomato garden tips to help gardeners have tomato plants that provide lovely healthy tomatoes on their home vines. I was going to say ‘delicious sweet red tomatoes’, but did you realize that there are many tomato varieties that actually are not sweet tomatoes and also there are hundreds of varieties that are not red!

How to choose what tomatoes to grow.

There are two initial considerations to make once you have decided to grow tomatoes and the first one is, “what are you going to do with the ripe fruit” and secondly, “how many varieties do you want to grow.”

What Are You Going To Do With The Tomatoes?

Are you going to use them:
· for salads
· for drying
· in cooking like stews, served with steak etc.
· for making tomato jam
· for making pickles and chutneys
· for supplying family and friends

What Tomato Type Do You Want To Grow?
Now that you have the answers to the above questions the next ones to consider are:

· do you want to grow small tomatoes like cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes
· what size of tomato do you want to grow – should you be looking for large fleshy fruit and should it be red or yellow or even striped – or something else altogether
· do you want to grow tomatoes that are a little different from the ‘norm’ in color, something like Black Russian or White Beauty
· what garden space do you have in which to grow tomatoes as this will affect the type of tomato vines that you choose as there are indeterminate (tall), determinate (bushy) and semi-determinate (medium height) varieties
· do want plants that produce a lot of fruit or is the quality of the fruit more important
· do you want heirloom (seeds that have not been cross-bred and have the best flavor) or hybrid (seeds that have been cross-bred and are usually used in the commercial market and are not as flavorsome as the heirloom) tomatoes

How Many Varieties To Plant In Your Home Tomato Garden?

Now that you have narrowed down how you are going to use the tomatoes and how many you want to grow in your garden, you can choose the different varieties that will provide you just what you want.

The final decision of how many varieties you can grow in your home tomato garden will, I imagine, come down to just how much room you have in your garden for tomato growing. In making the final decision remember that if you don’t have room to grow all you want in the garden you could plant some of the smaller determinate varieties in containers or pots or maybe grow some upside down tomatoes for a change.

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There is no question that adding manure to your home vegetable garden has tremendous benefits. Knowing where to get it, what kind to use and how to add it is just as important to know.

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I love the scene in the television show Seinfeld where character George Costanza, played by actor Jason Alexander, is talking to a female named Kelly, played by actress Tracy Kolis, about his love of the word manure. The funny line is, “when you consider the other choices, manure, is pretty refreshing.” Of course Kelly cuts the date short as she finds talking about the subject pretty strange.

Had Kelly been a vegetable gardener she might have gone off on a tangent as to the wonderful benefits manure has for your home vegetable garden. I guess the “show about nothing” did not want to take that route.

Manure from the proper sources (I’ll get to that in a moment) presents you with a great opportunity to add much needed nutrients back into the soil and with seasoned manure from these same sources, you can brew a wonderful elixir called manure tea. We’ll cover manure tea sometime in the future.

Here is how manure works to benefit your home vegetable garden. Manure is nothing more than organic matter that contains tremendous amounts of nutrients your vegetable plants can use, such as nitrogen. However, in order for your plants to use those nutrients they must be released from the manure. The only way this can occur is to have a higher life form feed on the manure (yeah I know it sounds gross) such as worms that then release their own castings that plants then use. This is just a basic overview of course.

There are both good and bad manures that you need to know about. Your dog, cat and human manure is bad. It can be toxic to your plants as well as the underlying ecosystem. Do not use these manures. Good manure comes from sources such as cows, horses, chickens and other types of grain or grass fed live stock.

Now that you know how manure works and what the good types of manure are, the next obvious step is to know how to add it to your home vegetable garden. Simply add the manure to your garden and mix it in with your soil. The important part, which I will get into in a moment, is knowing exactly at what time of the year you should be adding it. Make sure you mix it in thoroughly with a pitchfork, broad fork or tiller.

This step is crucial in the adding stage and that is what time of the year should it go in. If you have fresh manure, meaning it is less than 6 months old (yeah I know who keeps the dates on this stuff), then it is recommended that you mix the manure into your soil at the end of your growing season, which for most of us is in the autumn months. If you have seasoned manure then you should add it no later than 4 weeks before planting. This gives it plenty of time to start releasing all of those wonderful nutrients.

So where do you get manure? You could buy it at a local home or garden center, but why do that if you can get it for free from a local horse or cow farm. Just check on websites such as Craigslist in the farm and garden section. Also, if you do find someone that is willing to give you some manure, make sure the livestock are not fed with any types of grain or feed that contain chemicals. Those chemicals could be passed to the manure.

There is no question that adding manure to your home vegetable garden has tremendous benefits. Knowing where to get it, what kind to use and how to add it is just as important to know.

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Answer this question. Do you live in the city where dirt has given way to concrete and asphalt and do not have the space to plant a healthy organic home vegetable garden? I used to be the same way and what I found out was that you can still have a produce filled garden right in your own apartment or out on a small deck.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a huge backyard that they can turn the soil and plant their favorite herbs, vegetables or fruits, but there is a pretty easy solution to this problem, it is a Container Garden.

What is a Organic Home Vegetable Container Garden?

A container garden, as the name implies is just a garden that has been planted in small containers of some sort.

Container gardens can be planted in milk cartons, small pots, boxes, plastic buckets, and even an old potato sack, if you have one. There are limitless items you can use to plant organic vegetable home gardens with limited space at hand.

Stay away from metal containers even though they are strong they conduct heat and will expose the roots of the plant to a lot of temperature change that is not good for the growth of the plant.

All you need is the willingness to take action and start collecting the containers that you wish to plant your vegetables or herbs in.

If you have the space a small 5′ by 5′ box is ideal for planting quite a few different organic vegetables.

What you can plant in small areas!

Here are just a few ideas of vegetables that you can plant and the size of container you will need. Some of these may take a larger container than a milk carton or small box but this will give you a basis to work off of.

Baby Finger, Gold Nugget, Kinko Carrots can be planted in round containers that are about 6″ deep.

Early Snowball Cauliflower are fast growing vegetables that will grow well in an 18″ wide by 24″ deep container.

Pod Peas in the Sugar Ann, Sugar Bon or Sugar Daddy type will grow well in a 12″ wide by 12″ deep container.

This should give you a good start to getting your organic home vegetable container garden off to a great season. There are many more types of organic vegetables that grow very well in containers. I urge you to learn all you can about the types of plants you are wanting to grow before jumping into container gardening to quickly.

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Finally, last but not least, but last for a reason, was to contact your local SPCA or animal control department to rent some cages and trap the cat. Just like dogs, cats have rules they must abide by as well so your neighbor just can’t let their cat roam around all over the place. I left this for last, because this should be a last resort after all of the above have failed. You don’t want to create a war with your neighbor over something that could be handled differently. However, if you tried everything else, then go this route. The local animal control board will warn your neighbor about the issue.

Cats make great pets; there is no question about it. But you do not want them to interfere with your home vegetable garden and you certainly do not want them to do their business there. Try the methods above to make sure you can deter them from causing you any problems.