At Marlene's Market and Deli at Gateway Center there is a display of one gallon tomato plants that are grown by local farmer Ed Mills.

I always buy my tomato starts here because they're so beautiful, but also because the hard part is done.

I can pretend to have a green thumb when my friends come to admire my garden, and I fool with them by saying that I can't reveal my secrets, but truth be told, those secrets aren't really secrets and that green thumb belongs to Ed and his wife Mary.

The couple has been supplying organic tomatoes, squash, zucchini, raspberries, lettuce and honey to Marlene's store for more than twenty-five years.

When you buy one or more of the one gallon tomatoes at the store, you can grab a cheat sheet off the pile that Ed Mills offers to help you plant your new prize.

It's full of good advice, and though the instructions are quite clear and detailed, it even includes Ed's phone number so you can ask him questions if need be.

I called Ed to ask for an interview and to get any extra tips on how to grow the very earliest and best tasting tomatoes.

Mary answered the door and took me back to see Ed at the greenhouse.

"I used to work for Weyerhaueser..that's where I got this greenhouse..paid a $100 dollars for it." Ed said proudly.

Mary offered that Ed had worked for the timber giant in the technology center, and so had she.

Is that how the two of them met?

"No..it was my hair dresser!" she corrected.

Only the hairdresser knows for sure.

How did you begin growing things, Ed?

"My folks got me started, I was eight or nine years old, we had a cold frame and I used to fill it up with cow manure...for the heat."

When Ed and Mary moved to their small farm in Edgewood 32 years ago the work got more serious.

"I started growing a few tomatoes and I realized that it was costing me money, so I started selling them."

That was nearly 25 years ago, according to Marlene, who told me later, "Oh, Ed has the most fabulous produce...he had green leaf lettuce so big you could use if for a wedding bouquet."

Ed also sells homegrown honey.

"People come in and ask, 'Is Ed's honey in yet...where's Ed's honey?" Marlene usually stocks sugar snap peas, leeks, yellow squash and cabbage too, all grown on the Mill's modest farm.

I figured Ed would be the quintessential humble farmer and play down his skills, but he's clearly proud of his accomplishments.

"I have around 800 tomato starts each year...start them in the greenhouse January 1st and by March 1st they're ready to sell...and they all have blossoms or fruit by then."

Ed has the green thumb, I'm just green with envy.

Marlene met Ed first when he came into the store asking if she wanted to buy some produce.

She agreed and so did local farmer's markets in Tacoma and soon Ed's garden began to swell.

"I started with one head of lettuce a week and now I grow about a hundred."

Ed's process begins with his compost. He processes wood chips and other organic yard waste, mixes it with manure from his own free-range chickens.

"Those are Araucana chickens..from Peru...they call 'em Ameraucana chickens now...they lay blue eggs...I like everything different!"

I asked Marlene about it and she concurred.

"We love the eggs, my employees buy them and I buy them for myself." How about the honey, Ed?

"I've got ten hives...the bees feed on my Rugosa roses, that's what makes the honey so sweet." Mary offered me a spoonful of the nectar and they were right, it was delicate and delicious.

"At Marlene's we sell it as 'Maple Rose Honey'..with Ed's name on it." Mary said.

"Marlene is so great..she's very hands on...she makes sure we put Ed's name on all our products."

Ed showed me the hives, but we didn't get too close. I asked him about the current bee problems around the nation and he was aware of it.

"I lose a hive or so every year, but they come back." Do you use a smoker to keep them calm, Ed?

"You try to be nice to a bee, but then they'll turn around and sting you," Ed said.

Mary calls herself Ed's "marketing manager" and she's good at it.

In between dollops of honey and a very good squash casserole recipe, she told me about Ed's childhood.

"He was born in Auburn and was placed in a children's home at two...he got adopted when he was seven by a locomotive engineer."

Ed chimed in, "My life didn't start until I was seven!" Now, at 91, Ed is slowing his pace a bit.

"Every year I say to myself I'm not going to do so much," he grins.

Mary backed him up by saying, "We do what we can, but the biggest hazard for people who retire is to just lay around...you have to stay busy!"

Staying busy has been good for the Mills', and so has raising their own food.

"I'm sort of a health nut." Ed smiles, "You don't know what you're buying these days."

That is, unless you buy something Ed and Mary have grown.