You're listening to the Beginners Garden podcast. I'm Jill McShehehehe with Journey Withjil.net,

and my goal is to give beginning gardeners the we're going to be talking all about planting tomatoes. I don't know where you live, but where I am, the temperatures have

started to rise and we've been treated to some beautiful spring days. And with those pretty days,

a lot of people start getting the gardening itch. And if you're listening to this, most likely

you enjoy gardening or you're a beginning

gardener and most people plant tomatoes. I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone

referred to tomatoes as the gateway vegetable. It's the vegetable that you start planting at the

very beginning and then you get hooked

on it and then you start going for more and more vegetables. I'd never heard that about tomatoes before.

But tomatoes are the most popular vegetable for beginning gardeners and seasoned gardeners alike.

That's why I thought now would be a perfect time

to do a podcast on planting tomatoes. We're going to be talking about when to plant tomatoes,

how early is too early, can you wait a little bit, how soon can I get them in the ground.

We'll also talk about the supplies you need to plant tomatoes and also

how far apart they need to be planted and just some other details that will be helpful for you

to get your tomatoes off to a really good start. But before I talk to you about these basics,

I want to tell you a story. If you've gone on my blog at Journey Withjil.net, you know that I

blog about my faith and my family and my garden. And I've been blogging for a while and I'm a member

of a local writers group and we meet together usually about every month and we talk about what

we're writing about. It's a faith-based

writers group, but they're very encouraging with my gardening writing as well. I was at my friend

Vicki's house and sometimes we end up meeting during lunchtime. And so this particular day,

...