Vegetables take lots of careful planning

Bryce Mutch's onions have been shipped from Texas and he plans to have them in the ground next week. Mutch has done all of the planning and prep work in order to see the fruits of his labor.

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"Right now, it's really about figuring out what you are going to plant and where you are going to plant it," said Mutch, a master gardener from Harlem who has a 5,000-square-foot vegetable garden.

Mutch has been preparing his soil for new plants and scouring seed catalogs. He's mixed a combination of compost, lime, Epsom salt and cricket manure and turned it into the soil where he will plant his vegetables.

What Mutch will do in the coming weeks and months is begin his seedlings inside and continue going through his garden supplies to be sure all is ready for the growing season that lies ahead.

Aside from the five varieties of onions Mutch will plant are a dozen varieties of peppers and tomatoes, six types of eggplants, sweet potatoes, okra, zucchini, yellow squash, corn, melons and cucumbers.

Mutch prefers to grow his own vegetables rather than buy them in the store.

"The tomatoes you buy in the store are terrible," he said. "You'll notice there's no blemish on store-bought tomatoes because they pick them green and take them to the packing house where they wash them and put the hose to them -- ethylene -- to turn them red. But there's no juice coming to them from the plant, so they aren't very juicy."

Mutch, however, doesn't plant carrots or potatoes, opting to buy those at the market.

"You know why?" he asked. "You can buy them too cheap."

The grandson of farmers, Mutch said the farming know-how and the love of the outdoors is in his genes.

"I don't play golf," he said with a laugh.

"Gardening is probably cheaper."