It’s time: time for the A Way to Garden annual winter seed series kickoff, when I virtually shop the catalogs with various expert friends and otherwise talk about seedy stuff, like what to grow and how to grow it, and how in the world we can each resist ordering one packet of everything we see. With Craig LeHoullier, author of the hit book “Epic Tomatoes,” and a co-founder of the Dwarf Tomato Project—and also the guy who named the beloved ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomato in 1990—I talked about a couple of the tomato’s Solanaceous cousins, eggplants and peppers. And I basically learned what tomato-mad Craig grows when he’s not growing tomatoes.
Craig is known to many as the NC Tomato Man and to others as the straw-bale gardening guy, but besides his expertise in both breeding tomatoes and writing a book about them—you can enter to win a copy of “Epic Tomatoes” in the comment box at the bottom of the page—Craig also has an epic collection of seeds of heirloom eggplants and peppers. Shop the catalogs with us, from new developments in greens, plus learn to grow beets unexpectedly from indoor sowings, and eggplants and peppers, too.