Gardening with a rambunctious 18 month old boy is about as frustrating as cleaning house while chained to a feces-throwing Rhesus monkey. From day one he would immediately pull whatever I had planted back up by its roots. I had to wait until he was asleep to plant anything, and there was still a 50/50 chance he'd tug it out first thing in the morning. Then he stripped the mint plants of all of their leaves, and I do mean ALL of them.  They failed to recover and mint is one of the hardiest, most tenacious, weed-like plants I've ever grown. He loves the taste of fresh mint leaves. I guess I should be thankful for that, but I miss my mint iced tea this summer.

Now he is plucking off every baby green tomato as soon as it shows itself and throwing them at my head. Nice. Let's add injury to insult. I've got eight tomato plants in the ground and two in gigantic pots. He has plucked the ones in the ground clean so that none of them has any fruit at all, however he has more or less left the potted ones alone. So I may actually get a few tomatoes this year. This weekend I found my first ripe one. Hooray! Summer has arrived. Although I will have to shell out some serious cash for a bushel or two at the farmer's market if I want to do any tomato canning this summer. So much for economizing. I'll keep you guys posted on my $64 homemade cans of tomatoes and salsa this summer. If you haven't read the book 'The $64 Tomato', you should. It's by William Alexander and chronicles his process of starting a kitchen garden. Long story short, he divides his gardening costs by the amount of resulting food and discovers that the beautiful, delicious heirloom tomato sitting on his plate cost him a whopping $64. It makes buying everything at Whole Foods seem imminently inexpensive and reasonable in comparison.

Stay posted in August and September for those canning recipes!