How much of our time and focus we can spend on gardening can shift overnight as we experience a major life change. My Growing Epic Tomatoes course co-leader Craig LeHouiller can speak to that fact as this season he began juggling being a first-time, very involved grandfather and keeping up with his garden.
Craig has been gardening since 1981 and wrote the book on growing tomatoes, “Epic Tomatoes; How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time.” He also penned “Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales: Easy Planting, Less Weeding, Early Harvests,” and he’s the tomato adviser to the Seed Savers Exchange and a co-leader of the Dwarf Tomato Project. Together, Craig and I co-lead the Online Gardening Academy™ course Growing Epic Tomatoes.
Craig LeHoullier is a tomato growing expert and a newly minted grandfather.
Photo Courtesy of Craig LeHoullier
2025 is Craig’s 44th year of gardening. He’s only taken off one year in all the time he’s been a gardener, and that was when he moved from Pennsylvania to Raleigh, North Carolina. These days, he lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
As Craig divides his time between raising his plants and being a caretaker for his grandchild, his plants have been neglected at times. But they aren’t acting like it. “Plants do find a way despite our best efforts to harm them,” Craig says.
Craig’s Typical Gardening Routine
When Craig became obsessed with growing many different varieties of tomatoes, his routine became very involved. In starting seeds, he is very careful about his technique and rushes in every morning to see if they germinated. He’s really careful about the transplant date — he very closely monitors the temperature and makes sure the plants don’t get exposed to winter rain — and maintains the seedlings up until it’s time to plant them out.
Once the outdoor gardening season begins, that’s the focus of his day almost every day.
But having a grandchild changed all that.
“What’s happened this year is that stuff had to just get done,” he says. “So spur of the moment, what am I going to grow this year? Get the notebook, write it all down, find the seeds, get them planted. Maybe not looking every day at what’s going on in there, but maybe every two or three days.”
He potted up the seedlings, maybe a little too early, he says, and got them outside maybe before he should have. “Maybe they experienced some wind that they shouldn’t have. Or I made a mistake when the weather said it was gonna be 40, I forgot my microclimate is much colder, and it was 33 when I woke up in the morning.”
He got his straw bales when he normally does and treated them to prepare them for planting into.
“The plants were tiny when I got them in,” he recalls. “So May 1st was planting day, and literally the tomatoes were sticking up two inches tall, maximum.”
But he measured the tomato plants recently and they were about 30 inches tall — and gorgeous.
In addition to tomatoes, Craig planted 80 corn plants in four straw bales. The plants are now three feet tall. He couldn’t find any information on the internet about anyone who grows corn in straw bales, so he figured he would be the one to try it and blog about it.
Craig is experimenting with growing corn in straw bales. Photo Courtesy of Craig LeHoullier
Craig’s Tiny Seedlings
“We had a very cool, very wet spring where the plants were heat and sun starved,” Craig says. “And again, each season reiterates lessons that you’re already aware of. You know that tomatoes, eggplant and peppers need heat for the top growth to really kick in. But the root system was OK.”
“They really were sun starved. They were warm starved, but they had to go in. So instead of my typical 4-6-inch seedlings, they were 2 inches tall. And I figured, what the heck? Straw bales are nice and warm, the centers, and we’re all heated up. Let’s just put ’em in and see what happens.”
Craig started his seeds in Metro-Mix propagation mix and Metro-Mix 830.
“Neither one of them thrilled me this year, but I don’t think it was the Metro-Mix. I think it really was the weather,” he says. “They just weren’t getting the heat and the light. And I don’t think I had my plants under lights for a second this year.”
Craig says each year he tries to make things simpler so he can share his shortcuts with people who are time-constrained. This year, it was Craig who was time-constrained.
“I think the moral of this story is if you’ve got a good root system, the top of the plant can be quite small, and as long as it’s going into a suitable environment, it will kick on,” he says. “I didn’t feed the plants until they were in the ground for a couple of weeks. And again, something new I instituted. I get tired of mixing up water-soluble plant food. So this year I am going with infrequent, very light applications of 10-10-10 on the bale surface. Just a little bit in the center, a little ring around each plant, giving it an initial watering in. Let Mother Nature do the rest with the rain. So my plants are getting fed now about every three weeks, and I can see no difference in the plants between the weekly applications of the water soluble.”
10-10-10 fertilizer has a lower nitrogen ratio than all-purpose water-soluble fertilizer, the latter of which Craig believes caused blossom end rot and blossom drop on his peppers because it was too rich in nitrogen.
“I was giving my plants sirloin steak where maybe they would’ve done just as well giving them some nice cheeseburgers,” he says.
Blossom end rot occurs due to a calcium deficiency in the plant. The soil likely has plenty of calcium, but during times of inconsistent watering, that calcium is not drawn up into the plant. So the solution to blossom end rot is not to add calcium to the soil but to water more regularly. However, excess nitrogen is another reason why tomato and pepper plants may experience blossom end rot.
“My tomatoes really haven’t suffered as much from it,” Craig says of blossom end rot. “In fact, I had at least 10 varieties that didn’t have a single blossom end rot fruit. But almost all of my bell peppers here, they’ve rotted before they’ve ripened.”
The peppers would turn into bags of water and rot while he was waiting for them to ripen.
Craig treats straw bales with nitrogen fertilizer and transplants tomatoes and other crops into them. Photo Courtesy of Craig LeHoullier
Breaking from Protocol and Pondering Why We Garden
Craig and I are science-minded and have an urge to stick to those protocols. But we have also been around the block more than a few times and know when we can let our hair down, so to speak, and take our foot off the accelerator.
“Gardening is both an art and a science, and I think some years when you feel like treating more of the art side of it, you actually learn new things,” Craig says. “That’s when you discover.”
He says that after 44 gardens, taking care of a grandchild and approaching his 70th birthday “you start looking back, you start looking ahead.”
It makes you ponder the question, why do we garden?
“Those of us who are real garden enthusiasts, why do we garden for 44 years? What distinguishes us from the people who picked gardening up during COVID, and then after COVID eased, they said, ‘Well, that was that. I’ve done my gardening. Now I’m going to go down on to do something else.’”
Some of us dabble, make mistakes, create something, and share what we have learned. Others go to the internet to look up everything and follow the prescribed steps.
Craig diligently labels his seedlings. Photo Courtesy of Craig LeHoullier
Our Vegetable Gardens Have a Role in the Ecosystem
A vegetable garden is part of a biodiverse ecosystem. It contributes to the local ecosystem and depends on it. A healthy ecosystem is more responsive to pest outbreaks and more resilient.
Habitat loss and excessive pesticide use harm the ecosystem at large, and therefore, our gardens as well. But when we practice ecological gardening, we contribute to the ecosystem in a positive way. Craig says he feels more and more that it is incumbent upon him to take an active role in that.
“Last year, I noticed the cardinals picking tomato hornworms off my tomato plants, and occasionally tomato fruitworms,” he says. “So we don’t feed the birds anymore. What we have is a habitat where lots of things set berries or seeds. But we do provide water. So the diversity of birds in our yard has grown since we stopped feeding the birds.”
The visitors include more than just finches, which come around places where there is a birdfeeder. Craig sees all kinds of birds.
“Is there anything you can grow in your flower garden that will draw pests away from your tomatoes?” Craig asks. “Do you have anything in your flower garden that is bringing in pests that can get onto your squash or cucumbers or tomatoes?”
He encourages thinking about the interconnectedness of everything you grow in your yard instead of thinking of “little bubble-protected blocks that are all independent of each other.”
The birds you attract to your hard provide hornworm control. Photo: Amy Prentice
Straw Bale Growing Experiments
Last year Craig grew 16 tomato plants, once in each straw bale. He wanted to know how productive he could get a tomato plant to be when he gives it the benefit of a straw bale all to itself. He pruned down to one main stem and three suckers per plant.
Earl produced 30 to 40 pounds off one plant, while Cherokee Purple had blossom end rot on every fruit. Every other variety had results somewhere in between.
“I liked the extreme pruning because I could look at the plumbing of the plant and I could keep the plants well tended, but 16 varieties is not enough,” Craig says.
This year, he’s going back to planting two varieties of tomato plants into each bale, but maintaining two growing stems: the main stem plus one sucker growing up.
He has 44 varieties growing in his garden now, most in bales and the remainder in grow bags.
Some plants he is growing so that he can harvest the pollen to make hybrids.
“This is an R&D garden,” he says. “I’m growing enough mysteries, enough new things, doing enough experiments because I have to make it interesting for me to want to go out there and do all the work.”
Experimenting really does make gardening more engaging. One of the reasons I love gardening so much is that no two days are the same.
I am in the habit of picking off the earliest flowers on tomato plants. This year, I could hear Craig in my ear, and left them there to produce fruit. Today, a huge Black Krim tomato is on my counter. Experimenting can pay off in delightful ways.
“Sometimes we have to understand these crops have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, in many cases without any human intervention,” Craig says. “So gardeners love to intervene. It’s what we do. We cage, we stake, we prune. And a lot, a lot of times it makes us feel better. It may make the plant neater, it may make rational sense to us, but it’s really not important in the grand scheme of things.”
For example, Craig never tops his pepper plants and the plants still branch beautifully. Those who do top their pepper plants probably delay their harvest by a month, he estimates.
“We get locked in to how we’ve done things, and sometimes we put blinders on to seeing them in a new way,” Craig says, adding that sometimes, we do things for no other reason than “we saw our grandparents do it.”
Also keep in mind that the gardening advice you find on social media may be copied off a quack website and not based on any trials.
Craig mixed things up this year by planting one plant in each straw bale instead of two. Photo Courtesy of Craig LeHoullier
Pest, Disease and Weather Changes
Early blight is manageable for Craig, but septoria leaf spot is very aggressive. Changing weather patterns aren’t making things easier.
He says we assume in gardening that the environment is the same every year, but the changing weather is going to change the pattern of diseases, perhaps the strains of the diseases, the aggressiveness of diseases, and the travel patterns of the critters. “So we always do have to keep on our toes because these are the things that are going to make gardening super challenging.”
For some gardeners, successfully growing a healthy plant has become a 50-50 proposition, Craig says.
He gets emails from gardeners in Louisiana or Texas or Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and he hears how hard it is to grow tomatoes well. In Colorado, hail storms — a change in weather from past experiences — and massive rain in Tennessee have caused massive plant loss.
Crop loss can feel emotionally devastating, but more experienced gardens learn it is a fact of life.
“In the late ’90s when I was really deep into collecting things from the Seed Savers, I would take the loss of a plant almost like the passing of a pet. It would really bother me. I’d be depressed about it,” Craig says. “… I know enough relatively new gardeners to know that this depression from gardening occurs only because … you’ve got love invested into growing your plants.”
Experience puts things in perspective: There’s always next year.
“What we’re doing is something unique and important in the world right now.” Craig says. “You know, it’s not only growing food or growing good-quality food. It’s building community, making friends, learning, and sharing that learning. So, this is not a little hobby. This is a big thing that’s well worth spending a lot of time pondering and talking about and teaching other people about.”
Wet and warm weather helps septoria leaf spot to spread quickly.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation catching up with Craig LeHouiller. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
How have you experimented in your garden like Craig LeHouiller? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 003: Growing Epic Tomatoes with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 004: Heirloom Tomatoes: Past, Present and Future with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 047: Tomato Seedling Mistakes with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 056: Tomato Care Checklist with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 064: Tomato Growing Season Lookback: Lessons Learned With Craig LeHoullier
Episode 095: Tomato Seed Starting Update: Innovations and Inspiration, with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 173: Starting a New Tomato Garden: Lessons Learned, with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 208: Growing Epic Tomatoes: Our Just-Released Online Course Preview, with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 266: How Heat Affects Tomato Plants and How to Protect Them, with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 301: Seed Starting Updates This Year vs. Last Year and More, with Craig LeHoullier
Episode 357: Tomato Talk and Big Gardening and Life Changes, with Craig LeHoullier
joegardener Tomato Care Checklist free resource
joegardener blog: Busted – Top Five Tomato Growing Myths
joegardener blog: How Do I Grow Tomatoes
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Top Tomatoes – What to Do When Tomato Plants Get Too Tall
joegardenerTV YouTube: Sunscald – What Happens when Tomatoes Are Overexposed
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Save Tomato Seeds
joegardenerTV YouTube: The Ultimate Tomato Cage in 5 Simple Steps
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
GGW Episode 1201: Epic Tomatoes with Craig LeHoullier
Craig LeHoullier: Heirloom Gardening for All
“Epic Tomatoes: How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties of All Time” by Craig LeHoullier
“Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales: Easy Planting, Less Weeding, Early Harvests” by Craig LeHoullier
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Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you make a purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Proven Winners ColorChoice, and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
