The Green Man has recommended to clients for nearly 2 years now to design and install an expansive potager in a 6-hour sun area on their sites. OK, here's another reason to start NOW: store tomato prices are ridiculously high...and what you get...pulpy, tasteless, and useless...makes growing one's own tomatoes highly desirable. Tomatoes are great plants for beginning gardeners to try to build confidence and skills. And, tomatoes are so easy to cultivate!
Flavorful Tomato 'Big Pink'
Tough 'Snowball' white marigolds produce 3" flowers on 2' plants, and they protect both roses and tomatoes from pests.
www.burpee.com/product/id/102997.do
Design triad: The Apothcary's rose (Rosa gallica officionalis) is the traditional potager rose. Keep tomato plant 12" away to protect the root system. Mediate the bright rose pinks and bright tomato reds with groupings of white marigolds between. www.roguevalleyroses.com
Let's enumerate the reasons to grow your own vegetables, starting with tomatoes:
1. They're easy to grow. They need stakes for support, but they thrive in hot, dry weather.
2. They are real tomatoes, and nothing beats the taste of vine-ripened fruit.
3. Gardening a bit each day has inumerable health benefits. In fact, in Candide, Voltaire recommends gardening as the only reasonable response to a wacky world.
Carefree pink Knock Out rose
www.naturehills.com
Cheerful and elegant cherry tomato 'Sun Gold' Yummy!
Design triad: Accent pink Knock Out roses and 'Sun Gold' tomatoes with Victorian heirloom EDIBLE 'Empress of India' nasturtiums.
4. Tomatoes are colorful additions to the potager. They LOVE the benefits of companion plants such as carrots and colorful marigolds in bright yellow, white, and creams. Do not use orange.
5. A fresh food-producing potager is a terrifc substitute for expanses of high-management, inert turf. Enjoy greens on the golf course...grow greens (and tomatoes)at home in a potager off the terrace and near the kitchen.
You can do this. Start here: www.americanpotager.com
www.burpee.com/category/vegetables.do?cid=2010_03_15_TomatoPrices&
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