Nothing tastes quite like home-grown vegetables, with fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes top of the tree for many lovers of this cooking and salad favourite.

Getting them up and going in your home garden vegie patch during our chancy spring weather, however, can be a touch tricky, with local tomato grower with the golden touch, Peter Baker, showing he is much more than just a pretty face!

For years, Mr Baker has offered a range of tomato varieties from his Brunswick Street allotment as seedlings and plantlets just in time to transplant straight into your home garden as the weather warms up.

“I’ve been doing it since the early 2000s and I love it; this year I have Oxhearts, Grosse Lisse, Black Russians, Big Reds, Romas, and Little Toms,” Mr Baker revealed.

“I have other vegetables as well: apple cucumbers, Lebanese cucumbers, jack zucchinis, capsicums, and spinach,” he added.

Mr Baker’s sideline started when he found he was producing far more vegetables than he could use himself, and so began looking for a way to help others share the benefits of his green thumb.

“I had that many that people started to come and buy them off me. I’ve had the same regular customers for years and they keep coming back,” Mr Baker revealed.

“So, for a month at about now, I run an ad in the classifieds section of Orange City Life, just telling people what I have at the moment for that season,” he said.

The work, though, is not all business and, as a senior, he believes he gets just as much enjoyment out of his little allotment as he puts in. Because they are locally grown, he says, his plants are also far more likely to take than seedlings shipped in by large nursery chains and hardware stores that work on bulk sales to remain profitable.

“I also enjoy it for my health – it keeps me fit, keeps me active, and keeps me outdoors,” Mr Baker said.

“All the plants I sell, I also grow from seeds myself, which means they’ve been locally acclimatised, not like the big retailers that can get stock from Brisbane and anywhere and everywhere, at certain times,” he concluded.

To get your favourite seedlings and plantlets, so as to have sun-ripened, delicious tomatoes for the summer ahead, call Pete on 0427 631 013.