This year, like millions of other Americans, Morgan Perlman planted his first vegetable garden. Though only 12, he successfully grew enough fresh produce to keep his family well-fed for much of the summer.

"It's healthier and it tastes better," says the soon-to-be seventh grader at Bala Cynwyd Middle School.

Many first-time gardens in the Philadelphia area flourished this summer, despite incessant rain, the occasional groundhog attack, rogue pumpkins, monster tomatoes, and in one noteworthy case, a peculiar, fungus-like scourge called dog vomit slime mold.

Fuligo septica patches emerge on damp wood mulch, evolving from bright yellow froth to tan-colored crust, capable of creeping onto plants and walls like an unstoppable blob.

Ben Abella of Ardmore may be a neophyte gardener, but he's also a physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Even he was flummoxed by "these big, yellow, ugly things that grew really quickly on the mulch."

Google diagnosed dog vomit slime mold, a name that never fails to elicit laughter in the Abella household.

"It looked like someone had barfed in our backyard," Abella says. "We thought it was animal poop or we said, 'Oh my God, we have aliens in our backyard. We're in trouble.' "

The slime is harmless, if unsightly, and Abella, his wife, and three young children just walk around it. "Deep in our genetic code, it says to avoid this thing," says Abella, who made other interesting discoveries this summer, too.

What he thought was a weed, then an errant cucumber, in the mulch turned out to be a descendant of last Halloween's pumpkins, when they were moved from the front of the house to the back.

"It's an amazing plant, really out of control. Can I, like, go to the state fair?" asks Abella, who, like many a new gardener, planted enough tomatoes and cucumbers to open a roadside stand.

Morgan Perlman had tomato issues, too. Although he wisely bought only one plant, labeled beefsteak, it turned out to be a cherry variety that's now as tall as he is and weighed down with fruit.

The onions turned to mush and the arugula "bolted," or went prematurely to seed in the heat. "It's like, dead," Morgan says. But he escaped the late-blight fungus that came early, on the heels of drowning rains, and crushed tomato-growers large and small, up and down the East Coast and beyond.

And while the resident groundhog pigged out on early spring lettuce, there were no visitors named aphid, leaf miner, beetle, or hornworm.

Raised beds were the brainchild of Morgan's mother, Rachel, a bond trader. She'd been listening to her lawyer husband, David, talk about The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's treatise on the American way of eating, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, about a year of eating locally.

In April, Mom, Dad and Morgan, one of three children, trooped off to the Bala library to hear a talk by Ron Kushner, a master gardener and horticulturist at Albrecht Nurseries in Narberth.

"We were mesmerized," says Rachel.

Soon, Kushner was hired to build four, 4-by-4-foot beds - he also planted Abella's - and Morgan stepped up to plant. Unlike many beginners, he methodically filled the beds with equal measures of compost from the dump and topsoil, then carefully placed and labeled his seeds and seedlings.

Besides the accidental cherry tomatoes, he planted peppers, cabbage, bush beans, zucchini, yellow squash, celery, eggplant, parsley, basil, and chives. He also moved existing patches of sage and thyme into the new beds and mint into a pot.

"Mint is so invasive," Morgan says authoritatively, using a term that reflects his frequent readings of The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch.

He recently planted lettuce, radish, cauliflower, and beet seeds for a fall harvest. All in all, an impressive debut for a young organic gardener who devotes equal energy to birding, guitar-playing, and mountain-biking.

Massage therapist Lois Pedrick of Woodbury, another first-timer, benefited from the more experienced gardeners in her Woodbury Community Garden. "They gave me lots of information. They were wonderful," says Pedrick, who modestly planted tomatoes, basil, lavender and marigolds in her 5-by-10-foot plot.

Modest planting is endorsed by Yardley master gardener Peggy Lawlor, who frequently advises new vegetable gardeners for the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Bucks County.

Besides picking a poor spot for a garden, one with bad drainage, lousy soil, or not enough sun, and failing to test and properly prepare the bed, Lawlor says, "beginners are often too ambitious. Their enthusiasm carries them away, they do too much, and the garden becomes a job or a chore, rather than a pleasure.

"It's good to start small," she says.

Pedrick did, and apart from early frost damage, had a clear season. "I loved going and watering it and weeding it and just being a part of it," she says. "It made me feel really good."

Here, Pedrick touches on why new gardeners, even those with more failure than success, find themselves hooked.

John Green, for example, "couldn't grow mold on bread" until he and a neighbor joined the Woodbury garden. Using seed-embedded strips, they planted radishes, broccoli, carrots, and peppers, with some tomato plants thrown in.

Green, a part-time Kmart worker from Deptford, not only tends his own plot, he also gladly helps others. Says Amelie Harris-McGeehan, who founded the garden in 2005, "He sees weeds, he pulls them out. He sees a job to be done, he does it."

One thing Green can't do is actually enjoy his fresh vegetables; he lost his sense of smell and taste in an industrial accident in 1973.

But he'll be back in the community garden next year anyway. A big part of the experience, after all, is "community."

Contact gardening writer Virginia A. Smith at 215-854-5720 or vsmith@phillynews.com.