I have planted, watered, weeded, sprayed, hoed, harvested, canned, frozen and, finally, eaten tomatoes. I have done the same for corn, beans, peas, okra, onions, turnip greens, squash, potatoes and peppers. The big garden on our farm was the backbone of food for my family. As the oldest child, I got WAY more experience growing food than I wanted.

I gardened... but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

I longed throughout my teenage years for the sight of the farm receding in the rearview mirror of the car taking me to COLLEGE... to the CITY... to where I could BUY my groceries rather than growing them!

Yet here I am, forty years later, enjoying each summer the taste of tomatoes and fruits I grow myself, appreciating the indescribable difference that fresh herbs make in Italian dishes.

I live in the CITY... but my landscape contains some of the same plants I desired never to see again when I left the farm.

Vegetables and herbs are easy to incorporate into a landscape. No need to have long straight rows taking up valuable landscape space. Just tuck the plants among your flowers and small shrubbery. You'll be surprised how attractive they are and how easy it is to care for them. Here are some ideas for incorporating edible plants into your spring and early summer landscape.

LETTUCE
Garden designers have been using lettuce in their fanciest plans for years. There's nothing stopping you doing it too. Buy plants as soon as they are available and install them 6" to 8" apart. Lettuce is excellent for lining paths and defining beds. Planted en masse it makes a swath of light green color when there is little else to look at in March.

Leaf lettuce is easier to grow than head lettuce. 'Black-Seeded Simpson', and 'Oak Leaf' are fine varieties. 'Red Sails' and 'Ruby' bring contrasting color to early spring greenery. 'Green Towers' romaine lettuce is taller and stiffer than the others.

TOMATOES
The key is to control where they ramble. Rather than using a utilitarian tomato cage, stick three bushy tree limbs into the soil around a plant. Trim the twigs into a globe shape approximately four feet high and three feet wide. By June, you'll have a green abstract sculpture dotted with green and pink fruit.

Look for tomato varieties described as compact. "Determinate" varieties are more likely to stay compact than "indeterminate" ones.

Don't have much outdoor space? There's no reason in the world you can't grow tomatoes in a container on your patio or deck. Just be sure the pot is large enough; containing nothing less than five gallons of soil. A half barrel makes a fine home for two plants.

BEANS & PEAS
Anything can be a support for climbing beans and peas. I have seen them grown purposely on bicycles, tricycles, rocking chairs and a lath trellis shading a deck. A chainlink fence makes a fine trellis, as does a rose arbor. Bean and pea flowers are attractive in their own right, usually in shades of lavender, but 'Jacob's Cattle' has bright red flowers and its speckled beans are fascinating to children. Let kids help you plant seeds in mid-April and call them back to examine the sprouts that appear in less than a week.

ROSEMARY
If any plant has "crossed over" from edible to ornamental, rosemary is it. Blue spires of flowers cover the shrubby plant in summer. It is woody enough to be used as a shrub or as a neatly trimmed topiary. 'Athens Blue Spires' is an upright (to 4 feet) and very cold-hardy variety. 'Prostrata' creeps across the ground, making it useful for groundcover, scent garden or edging.

I don't have room to describe how you can use several other vegetables and herbs. Parsley, sweet potatoes, onions, chives, garlic, peppers and turnip greens are all wonderfully adaptable for ornamental and edible use.

The best news of all is that by mixing edibles with your ornamental landscape, you'll have fewer pest problems. Mixing different species of plants is a well-documented way to "confuse" pest insects and it prevents diseases from spreading rapidly too.

I never would have predicted how much I enjoy gardening as an adult. I guess you could say the boy ran out of the garden but the man walked right back in!