As many of you know, I have been a gardener for about 30 years. Mostly in ground or container gardening. I’ve grown all kinds of vegetables, however over the last 10 years or so I have been specializing in tomatoes.

I have grown over 40 different types of tomatoes. Some of them were great, others not so good. Many of the unsuccessful tomatoes were my fault, I didn’t fertilizer properly, or the wrong kind of fertilizer, too much fertilizer… the list goes on and on, I call it KBG (Killed by Grower). You've all have had this problem at one time or another, and may still be having a hard time with your tomato crop.

Several years ago I started getting nematodes which caused me to start rotating my crops and sterilizing the soil. In ground growing requires a lot of physical labor.

Welcome to container gardening. This also has many of the same issues as in-ground gardening, plus you must make or purchase your soil and that needs to be changed every year.

I decided after a considerable amount of coaxing from a friend of mine, to try hydroponics. First I did a lot of research looking for a method that appealed to me. I decided to go with "Dutch Bucket Hydroponics". Why this method is called “Dutch Bucket Hydroponics” I don’t know, from what I could find out, this method started in Holland and therefore the name “Dutch Bucket”, but what do I know.

After two seasons of growing tomatoes hydroponically, I WILL NEVER GROW IN DIRT AGAIN. To learn more about growing in “Dutch Buckets” go to my website blog www.thegrouchygardener.com/hydroponics.html . The Dutch Buckets require a lot of work setting up, what I would like to offer to the home gardener is something that is easy and fun to do.

That is why I have this TOOL SHED CATEGORY. This category will display products that I think will be fun and easy for the beginning gardener. I will be adding new products from time to time, after of course, I have tried them out, making sure that they will help you to become a better gardener.