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Hi! I recently moved to a small home with a garden and am just day-dreaming about all the possibilities. My interest is mostly heirloom vegetables. But I like to grow "beautiful" vegetables that can be planted among flowers, like dahlias, peonies and daylilies. The other day, I found Louisa Jones' book on French Vegetable Gardening and I really like the idea of a cottage 'vegetable' garden.

May I share with you this little story: Some years ago, I discovered Dr. Caroline Male's book on Heirloom Tomatoes and the Tomato forum here at GW. I checked a website she had recommended, to purchase some seeds. There it was announced that a few days later the price of seeds would go up. I decided to buy all I could (for future years, you see...) at the old price. That year, I grew 60 plants of tomatoes each of a different variety. There was place for nothing else in the garden that year but tomatoes. It was totally insane, and I loved every minute of it! I knew every plant and took notes on their progress. Then I got to trade some of the seeds for more varieties. Kids from the neighborhood would come with baskets that I filled with tomatoes green, red, yellow, purple. Hoping that this would introduce them to the wonderful world of heirloom vegetables. It was so much fun... until the time came to deal with the abundance in hour after hour of canning and freezing... :)

I live in: United States

My zone is: z6 PA

My favorite forum 1 is Growing Tomatoes.

My favorite forum 2 is Pennsylvania Gardening.

First registered on March 02,2005.