Get a jump on gardening season by starting plants indoors

Have you seen William Alexander's book, "The $64 Tomato" (Algonquin Books, $13.95)? Subtitled "How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden," it's a hoot.

I hope, though, the book doesn't discourage anyone from trying his or her own hand at growing vegetables. Alexander ran up the average cost of each of his tomatoes by including extravagant costs such as $150 for mulch, $300 for an electric fence, and even an amortized portion of the garden design ($300) and initial construction ($8,500).

Another factor in his high cost-per-tomato calculations was the unexpectedly low yield, due at least in part to the heirloom varieties he grew. (Although their fruit can be beautiful and tasty, heirlooms are seldom as productive as modern-day varieties such as Early Girl.)

The truth is, in times of economic uncertainty, people have always turned to the backyard vegetable garden as a source of inexpensive and wholesome food to feed their families. With today's increasing appreciation of locally grown, organic vegetables, growing your own makes even more sense.

For the most economical tomatoes (not to mention a lot of satisfaction and a choice of many more varieties), start by planting seeds indoors in late February or early March.

If you have any pots saved from previous plant purchases, give them a quick dip in a solution of one cup chlorine bleach mixed with five pints water. If not, you can recycle paper cups, shallow cardboard boxes or just about anything that will hold some sterile potting soil mix and allow excess water to drain.

A soil-heating mat provides the warm soil that tomatoes need to sprout, but you can also take advantage of the warmest spot in your house -- perhaps near a wood stove or hot air duct.

Grow-lights are nice, but an ordinary shop-light fixture with regular fluorescent bulbs works just as well for growing seedlings. Adjust the fixture so it is only a few inches above your seedlings, so your plants will grow sturdy rather than becoming tall and spindly as they stretch for more light. Or grow your seedlings in a sunny window.

When spring arrives, you can hurry the harvest by temporarily covering each plant with a Wall-O'-Water or other protective device. Or, you could protect your plants with recycled 5-gallon buckets, like my friend Ed Hofmann does. Ed just sets a bottomless bucket over each plant and, when the weather is cold, snaps the bucket's lid in place. If unseasonable cold threatens, he adds insulation -- crumpled newspapers stuffed in the empty spaces. The result? Ed always beats me at harvesting the season's first ripe tomato.