It’s the spring of 1989. We’ve just bought our first home and I have room to plant a garden!! I’ve got my hands in the soil, happily planting my first tomato plants ever. The smell of fresh-cut grass fills the air. The sun warms my face.

This is a perfect day. And I have no doubt on this beautiful Saturday that in just a few weeks I will be able to walk to my garden and pick a yummy tomato whenever I want to.

You can just about imagine what I was thinking about that day…

Plucking a ripe tomato from the vine, biting into it like an apple, and letting the juices dribble down my chin. Grilled hamburgers topped with perfect tomato slices. The oohs and aaahs from friends and neighbors who are impressed (and maybe a little envious) of my tomato garden.

Do your tomatoes always have splits and cracks and brown spots? Maybe some years your crop is great – but the next summer the problems are back again?

Or maybe you’ve never tried growing tomatoes before. Tell you what, if you do it blindly then I can almost guarantee you’ll end up with the same results as I did with my first garden.

You see, lots of beginning tomato growers think that if you can grow something else – like sweet corn or pumpkins – then growing tomatoes should be a snap.

It’s not. And as I discovered 21 years ago, just because you know how to grow veggies doesn’t mean you can grow tomatoes, too… at least not without a little help!

Back then there weren’t many resources available. I had to do my research in the library. But I kept researching, kept experimenting, and every year my tomatoes came out a little better than the year before.

People come from miles around to buy my tomatoes and plants.

I even teach tomato-growing classes locally –many of my students have been growing tomatoes for many years and can’t believe it when they learn how simple it is to protect their tomatoes from disease WITHOUT USING CHEMICALS.