One of our favorite parts of the summer is growing our own vegetables. Because we live in the city we do container gardening, but just because the garden is small, doesn’t mean the plants are!

Wow, this is the first year we’ve done cucumbers, and their size is shocking – over 12” long! This year we decided to do two types of cucumbers, and they couldn’t be more different. The Asian Burpless Cucumber is long, dark and crunchy, while the Pickling Cucumber is softer, rounder and more yellow. Both are delicious.

We always plant heirloom tomatoes, and they’ve gotten better every year. We’ve got Lime Green Salad, Sun Gold Hybrid, Hungarian Heart Oxheart, Stupice, and Cherokee Purple varieties. The key to not having too many tomatoes at once is getting a variety of breeds that bloom at different times throughout the summer. But if there's extra we either freeze them or bring some to the office.

To top it all off we have a small pot for Yellow Mushroom Hot Peppers and another for basil.

Tossed with a little salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar - these make an awesome, easy salad! Can’t get fresher than that!

Container gardening is easy - we just buy baby plants at our local organic green house or farmers market in the spring after the last frost. Plant in containers about 18” diameter with lots of good soil, put in full south-facing sun and water the plants every day. Our secret weapon is an organic fertilizer used once a week – it smells bad, but works really well.