Tomatoes are indeed easy but they will need cages which I made with rebar and that you could make and store under the deck in the off-season. Apart from the cages, they will need water and some fertilizer. Do not start from seed until next year. My daughter ended up being attracted to and eating a lot of yellow pear tomatoes, a large (7-8 ft), productive tomato plant with pear-shaped yellow cherry tomatoes fruiting in clusters. She also dug up and ate carrots right there in the garden, and she liked cucumbers but eventually tired of them. The pole beans do have interest for the kids (they grow like those of Jack), and you could make it even more interesting by planting (besides the standard ones) purple, romano, speckled and white varieties. The beans are of interest to the parents too, because no other vegetables feeds you so well and for so long during the summer. In summer, I eat string beans every day. You will have to build a trellis (google it). Beans have to be seeded directly but they are the easiest seed to plant and one of the easiest veggies to grow. If you have a compost pile, or if you dump compost somewhere in the lot, you should try melons. They are certain to get your kids attention if they mature because they are incredibly delicious. You are trying to hook them right? Do not plant squashes this year because you may get squash vine borers, which require some skill to remove.

Hey, kid! Hope you don't mind hearing from a yellow thumb! (Huh? I used to be a brown thumb, killing plants so often, hubby swore that he could hear plants in stores, as we walk by, screaming, "No! No! Don't let HER buy me! Help! Help!" Now my thumb is slowly becoming green, because I've spent the last few years constantly studying how to garden, and forever learning from my mistakes. With that, I figure I'm half way there, and the thumb is yellow, leaning towards green. LOL) First, I hope you aren't planning to start a big garden now, if I understand that "6" behind your screenname as meaning you live in zone 6, too, since the season is closer to over, then beginning. That being said, second season is upon us, so you can still grow some lettuce, spinach, and a few "winter season" veggies, like brocolli and brussel sprouts. (I happen to like both. LOL There is a longer list of winter season crops, which I can't remember, since I'm STILL trying to grow brocolli and brussel sprouts -- third attempt, with one little stalk of brocolli for our Christmas dinner to show for my efforts, so far! But brocolli is fun to watch it's complete cycle, if you have the space to bring it into a slightly warmer place, like an unheated front porch or garage, since those florets turn into beautiful yellow flowers, followed by the seed pods within a year.) Anyway, this being your first year of container gardening, one thing I do recommend is to start by buying "potting soil" (not to be confused with "garden soil"), since it is made specifically for containers, and has one huge advantage over homemade compost -- it has no organisms growing in it, so you have a better chance of not growing diseased plants. Yes, I too make my own compost out of deadheading, weeds, egg shells, and annuals, after they die, but I learned, the hard way, this year, why that's not always the best idea. I have five tomato plants -- three regular size, one supposedly "patio size," and one cherry tomato. Out of the five plants, the cherry tomato is the only one that hasn't suffered from Blossom End Rot (BER), although it did topple during a storm, and has been struggling ever since. About 80% of our tomatoes have BER. Really frustrating, since this is the first year, we finally found a way to stop squirrels from eating them. LOL Next year's tomatoes are getting nothing but brand new soil (ammended with extra slow-release fertilizer -- a good idea for any plant you grow, except, occasionally herbs) in wider containers. (We've been growing them in the 5-gallon plastic "paint" cans -- don't use the ones that had chemicals, such as paint -- but have discovered that they get too hot during the worst of summer, so boil the roots of the tomatoes. Wider means better circulation. Best advice I can give you for changing your way of gardening style (assuming you used to garden the old fashioned way -- in the ground: Read! Read everything you can get your hands on about container gardening. It is a different "animal" from in-the-ground gardening, requiring a lot more hand watering, remembering to keep access to all your containers (I made the mistake of growing my popcorn and sunflowers in a huge container that is way out of easy reach, so I had to hand pollinate the popcorn using a chair, and have to move a whole bunch of stuff to even do that. LOL), and organizing the layout of your garden in such a way that all the plants get the amount of sun they need on all sides of them. (Two tomato plants were next to a table, so only grew away from that dark spot. I told you, I'm learning from my mistakes. LOL) Since you like edibles, I do recommend one really great book, so you can go past just thinking veggies, and considerable edible herbs AND flowers. The link is below. One thing to remember though, part of the fun of gardening is to experiment. I read this book after planting, so was unaware that container gardening does NOT allow for growing full sized pumpkins! Glad I didn't know that. Had I known, I wouldn't be having the pleasure of how those vines changed my concrete backyard into a lush jungle, and watching my three pumpkins: Quastimoto (named after the Hunchback of Notre Dame, because it is growing through a chainlink fence, so is quite deformed, but still happy growing LOL), the one growing between the edge of the popcorn/sunflower container and a container of flowers in front of it, and the one growing in my only concret container. (I scrapped a face onto that one, when it was small, and am watching the face expand as the pumpkin grows. LOL) Good luck, and let us know how your first attempt is working out! Lynn Here is a link that might be useful: McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers

Probably the ideal time to add manure would be spring. We do it when we get a round tuit. It's not a huge issue here, for the roses are never actually dormant, or fully out of bloom. Lynn, we have in the past gotten our horse poo from a small local boarding stable. The horses are NOT out grazing. They're in stalls or corrals, and nothing is growing there. Bagged stall waste -- largely straw -- is kept separate from the bags of manure. We did bring home some of that once, for a specific non-rose project. It was pretty urine-soaked, and rotted nicely in place. The manure is pretty much "pure" manure. It's bagged up in old plastic bags or feed sacks. You have to get there early to score it, because it disappears very quickly. We once watched a woman fill the entire trunk and inside of a fairly new luxury car, piling it carefully around the baby in the back seat in an infant car seat. It was awesome. If I run short of that source, I can always try for manure from my nephew's two horses. Lastly, the first time someone told me they used horse manure straight from the horse, I did not believe it. After hearing it more than once, we tried it, and saw that it's pretty wonderful stuff, just as it is. But one man's ceiling is another man's floor, and you shouldn't do anything you feel uncomfortable about. Jeri

I just want to know where to get pinkeye purple hull peas. My twelve year old daughter has declared herself a vegetarian, and I am trying to impress upon her that she will need to eat some type of pea, bean or nut(s) to get her protein. I wanted to go to the store to get pinkeyed purple hulled peas which is our family's traditional pea delicacy, but found everywhere I go these days there are mislabeled black eyed peas for sale. Is this treat becoming a rarity?