Heirloom tomatoes can be found in absolutely any variety and every color — even in black or white. Grow your own tomatoes and decorate your salads, sauces and sandwiches with vibrant fruits (yes, they are fruits).

If you have a longer winter, you may want to consider starting seeds indoors during the frostier months. Seeds are often available in more varieties than young plants you might buy in a nursery and they’re less expensive, too. A head-start under a grow light will help you take advantage of every bit of the growing season.

After about six to eight weeks, once your indoor seedlings have sprouted two to three sets of leaves, reduce watering a bit to get ready to move outdoors. Plant them in an area that gets a minimum of six hours of full sun. Check your growing region and weather for the best timing for your garden. To avoid shocking new plants, introduce them to outdoor elements for a few hours every day in the shade at first to “harden them off”, increasing the outdoor time each day. After seven to ten days of this process, they should be stronger, and ready to plant.

Before you plant your seedlings, look to see if they are bush variety (determinate) or vining tomatoes (indeterminate). Bush tomatoes are shorter plants, and produce all at once, where vine tomatoes can grow over ten-feet long and produce over a longer season. Most bush and vine tomato plants require at least two feet of space between them for air circulation. Bury plants up to their second set of leaves to form deep roots.

Stockier, bush tomatoes work great with typical tomato cages for support. Feel free to hit cages with a can of spray paint if your garden could use a splash of color.

Don’t have much room? Get a great yield by carefully training your vines to a trellis or fence. Find stretchy, weather-resistant plant ties at your local gardening store. This is a great method for heavy vining tomatoes that need more support. Bonus: Vertical tomato plants tend to be less affected by dampness and pests.

Many master gardeners recommend pruning your tomato plants to make them more manageable.  This may result in a reduced yield of tomatoes in a bush plant, but not usually in a vining tomato.  Never prune a plant that is shorter than 18” tall – and prune in the morning for the least amount of shock to the plant. Don’t splash water on a newly pruned plant to avoid disease forming.

If your tomato plant reaches the top of the trellis, don’t panic. Simply tie it loosely at the top and let it keep growing until it falls forward naturally, then continue to secure it loosely to the trellis on the way down. More tomatoes for you!

Dark spots on your plants’ stems might be an indication of stem ailments like blight or rot. Spraying your plants with milk can help to ward off some forms of rot naturally. 

Blossom end rot is a particular issue tomatoes suffer when they cannot get enough calcium from the soil. The blossom end begins to sink in and forms a dark spot of decay. Be careful not to over fertilize plants with a nitrogen rich fertilizer. You can avoid this issue by crumbling up eggshells and dropping them into the hole before you plant each of your tomato plants.

Most tomato plants tend to produce clusters of buds that lead to flowers after about four to six weeks. 

If pollinated by bees or insects, a tiny, green fruit will follow each flower. If flowers aren’t “setting”, they may not be getting pollinated. Consider planting flowers such as marigolds nearby in order to attract bees.

Once the green tomato forms, it will take a few more weeks for it to ripen and turn its final color. 

When trained vertically, a healthy tomato plant can produce a curtain of juicy, colorful fruits. The larger the tomato, the more sunlight and heat they need to ripen, so beefsteak and large heirloom tomatoes can benefit from 9 to 12 hours of sun a day if possible.  

Unlike store-bought hybrids that are bred for ease of shipping, heirloom tomatoes can have thinner skin that may bruise more easily. The superior flavor of tomatoes grown from heirloom seed outweighs any extra TLC and careful handling they might require.

If your tomatoes are under attack from birds or garden pests, you can clip fruits that are almost mature off the vine when they’re green and they’ll ripen on your windowsill. Store tomatoes at room temperature for best flavor.

Whichever variety you’ve chosen to grow, there’s no denying how good a tomato fresh from the garden tastes. When the skin turns glossy and the tomato feels slightly firm, you’ll know it’s time to harvest and eat! 

Buy plants that fit your climate and soil conditions. Balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) doesn't tolerate heat, humidity or poorly drained soils, so planting in the Deep South or in wet soils is a recipe for failure. Instead, this summer bloomer is a long-lived garden stalwart for USDA Zones 3 to 8, in well-drained soils.

Use cuttings instead of buying more plants. If you love the coleus (such as 'Indian Summer' shown here) that you already have, there's never a need to buy more. Take cuttings in the fall, pot up the new plants, keep them indoors by a window for the winter and you'll have plenty of instant color for the garden after the last frost in spring. For more varieties, exchange cuttings with friends, neighbors or garden-club members.

Take softwood and hardwood stem cuttings to propagate some of your favorite shrubs. The method and timing for woody-shrub cuttings depends on the variety. For the common flowering quince (Chaenomeles) shown here, August is the best time. Softwood cuttings, dipped in rooting hormone, are usually successful.

Choose pest-resistant bulbs. Squirrels won't eat the so-called "tommies" — Crocus tommasinianus — here, 'Ruby Giant.'

Choose bulbs that multiply. Unlike most tulips, which tend to weaken every succeeding year, some bulbs just keep going, replicating themselves with no effort from the gardener. Plant a few dozen daffodils, and in five years, you're likely to have many more.

Invest in self-seeding plants. Cleome, like hollyhocks, cosmos, forget-me-nots and shasta daisies, sow themselves but aren't invasive. Snap a picture of each plant so that, come spring, you'll be able to distinguish the leaves of a "keeper" from a weed.

Choose long-lived perennials. Plants like scabiosa, wallflower and hardy mums typically last 3-5 years. Other perennials like blanket flower, columbine and coreopsis are equally short-lived but reseed freely. Others are long timers, such as bearded iris, daylily, hellebore, astilbe and bee balm, to name a few. Peonies, seen here, are extremely enduring, sometimes lasting for more than a century.

Multiply your plants by dividing them. Some plants like daylilies, bearded iris, yarrow and ornamental grasses need to be divided every few years to reinvigorate them and to reduce overcrowding. What you'll gain for your efforts are new plants to expand your beds and to share with friends.

When a particular perennial is best divided depends in large part on when it flowers. Spring-blooming astilbe (shown here) can be divided in fall or early spring.

Wait until the plant is "resting" to divide it. Bearded iris is best divided about two months after it finishes flowering; many gardeners like to divide their irises in August.

Late-blooming perennials like helianthus, shown here, are best divided in spring. Filling your beds with a variety of perennials that give successive seasons of bloom, blooming shrubs and colorful conifers means you'll be less apt to load up on trays of annuals to fill holes in the landscape.