I used to think I hated tomatoes, until I actually had one straight from the garden. It was like sunshine in my mouth. I could not believe that the pale, tasteless slab I immediately picked off of junior bacon cheeseburgers on a regular basis was even the same vegetable. Eating it fresh literally changed my life. It opened me up to retrying other vegetables I had only ever eaten canned, frozen, or commercially sold.
I always liked salad, but after purchasing a local mix from the farmer’s market, I started to love it. The leaves tasted of summer. The fact that iceberg is ever categorized as a salad now seems like a travesty!
No matter how much I enjoy homegrown food, I have yet to master the art of growing it myself. Thankfully, this spring and summer the library is hosting a variety of grow-centric programing — from talks about what to plant to actually getting wrist deep in the dirt. For anyone new to gardening, or in need of new inspiration, there will be plenty of hands-on activities to choose. Pick up an events catalog at any location or check out crcpl.org/events for dates and times.
In addition to programming, you can also check out the following books. These guides are informative and interesting, turning daunting into doable. Read on to start plucking your own tomatoes in no time.
A helpful textbookish offering for getting started:
Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening a Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden by Deborah L. Martin
A near pocket-sized guide that packs a punch:
Vegetable gardening made easy: simple tips and tricks to grow your best garden ever by Resh Gala
If a gardening guide and a cookbook had a baby, this would be it:
Grow Cook Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening – Including How to Grow 50 Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits by Willi Galloway
For those renting or with limited space:
How to Garden When You Rent by Matthew Pottage
For those interested in learning about seeds and how to harvest them:
The Magic of Seeds: The Nature-Lover’s Guide to Growing Garden Flowers and Herbs from Seed by Clare Gogerty
You can pick up any of these books, and more, at our Main library location and learn to plan, plant, and pamper a garden of your very own.
For Future Reference 