Agreeing with everything you've said. In addition, there are some really excellent gardening tutorials on Youtube. Last year I learned how to sucker tomatoes

Agreeing with everything you've said. In addition, there are some really excellent gardening tutorials on Youtube. Last year I learned how to sucker tomatoes from youtube, as well as constructing those vertical string things that allow your tomatoes to grow up instead of out. Tomato tip: make sure you understand the difference between determinate and indeterminate plants before you buy. Determinate plants fruit all over the bush at one time, and then pretty much die. Indeterminate are more like vines and keep fruiting sporadically over the entire season. You'll be sad if you are expecting a long tomato season from one or two plants but accidentally buy a determinate plant. Semi-related, if your climate is warm enough for Jalapeños...those plants just never die. I abused and neglected mine all winter (South Carolina, so never freezing temps) and the poor little plant kept producing fruit. I hardly watered it, never fertilized and it lived in a pot outside. Despite that, it's still happily trucking along ready for the summer :)