Grow your own (tomatoes) from Bakersfield Express on Vimeo.

Working in her back room, Louise Kaiser transplants tomato starts she'll sell at the Bakersfield Farmers' Market. Photo by Jeff Nachtigal

By Jeff Nachtigal

From the sidewalk it’s an unassuming Alta Vista neighborhood house. But inside a serious plant growing operation sprawls from kitchen to living room to breakfast nook. This is high start season, and every flat surface of Louise Kaiser’s home is devoted to dozens upon dozens of spindly green tomato stalks. Each of which can, with the right balance of sun, water, and fertilizer, produce up to 30 pounds of homegrown, melt-in-your mouth vegetable candy in a season.

Farming is in Kaiser’s blood. Growing up 100 miles north of Sacramento in the Sacramento Valley, raising vegetables was part of life. So when she moved into the Alta Vista house nine years ago, Kaiser “tore up the shrubs” to plant vegetables in every patch of backyard dirt.

Then, 7 years ago, on a whim she sold her extra tomato starts at the Bakersfield Farmers’ Market and drew rave reviews. Sensing an opportunity, Kaiser launched into the vegetable start business.

Each year Kaiser and her daughter have planted extra seeds, and each year demand has grown to the point they sell out of dozens of varieties of tomato, pepper and eggplant starts. The Farmers’ Market is from 8 a.m. to noon in the parking lot of Golden State Mall, 3201 F St.

So once the approximately 2,000 tomato, pepper and eggplant starts that blanket her home from winter to spring have found their way to backyard gardens around the city, does Kaiser spread out to enjoy the start-free space in her house? No.

By late summer it’s time to begin sewing the purses, fleece blankets and Christmas ornaments they’ll sell at holiday bazaars in late-fall.

Where do they find the energy?

“Someone said there must be a lot of oxygen in the house with all the plants, but I don’t know,” Kaiser said with a laugh.