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FeedSow What?
A bountiful vegetable patch yields surprises
By Bonnie Blodgett
My newest vegetable garden went in outside our backyard fence. The east-facing slope along the alley near the dumpster used to be a compost heap until one of our neighbors complained about it to the health department. Eager to make amends, I decided to create a vegetable garden that was productive and also good-looking. What prompted this idea was my husband’s comment one fine spring day that the tomatoes weren’t really up to snuff last year and, by the way, why I hadn’t I planted this year’s yet?
My first thought was, there is no way I’m bothering with tomatoes again. But then I caught myself. Before he knew what had hit him, I’d secured a promise that he’d join me the next morning for a trip to the farmers’ market to buy heirloom tomato plants, as well as the usual herbs and lettuces. He even said he’d help me plant my new alley vegetable garden when I told him I was sick of dealing with the huge containers I previously used on the back patio.
The next morning it rained, so I ended up alone at the hardware store buying paint. While there, I discovered the new outdoor garden section, where they were selling heirloom vegetables, as well as peppers, beans, herbs, arugula, and cantaloupes.
Cantaloupes! How cool would that be?
I brought home all of the above, and the skies cleared. My husband was off on his bicycle. After he’d showered, and I’d begun mounding up the soil into hills for the melons, he had errands to run, he said. When he returned from the dry cleaners, he found me pounding metal stakes in the ground for the wire fence. Later, he was off again to the Harry Potter movie he’d promised to take our daughter to. At 9 p.m., I was still out there, sawing the ends off some wooden pickets to add a dash of style to the vegetable patch, which hadn’t improved the appearance of the dumpster area as much as I’d hoped.
The melon seedlings were sold in pairs—two to a pot—for mating purposes. I stuck a pair atop each hill. As opposed to the bushes that are easier to control but don’t keep producing indefinitely, the melon vines made it clear they wanted to climb up and over the fence as quickly as possible. I had to keep cutting back their huge, sandpaper-textured leaves. This didn’t bother the melons, which after about two weeks were so large I had to make supports out of panty hose to keep them from falling off the vine.
The melons began as pussy willow-like bulges emerging from inside bright yellow flowers. When they started to resemble large pickles, I panicked. Following some online research, I was convinced that I’d bought ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelons instead of cantaloupes. I called the hardware store to complain. Their “expert” said he’d had no other complaints but someone could have mixed up the plant labels. My cantaloupes sure sounded like watermelons to him.
More online research convinced me that these refrigerator-sized watermelons were going to be great. This is typical of me. I tend to see the glass not just half full but overflowing when things don’t go as planned, mainly because I’ve been trained after decades of marriage to a curmudgeon to look for the silver lining.
My vegetable patch measures about 10-by-14-feet. It contains four melon hills (two vines per hill) and a dozen heirloom tomato plants representing five or six varieties. I won’t know for sure which tomatoes are which until late fall because the foliage is so dense at the moment that I can’t even get in there to find ripening fruits, let alone the labels I carefully stuck in the ground beside each plant when they were 6-inches tall. They’re now 6-feet tall. When I do come up with a label during one of my lightning-fast plunges into the foliage jungle, I tie it to the plant that seems closest. So far I’ve fished out labels for ‘Green Zebra’ and ‘Brandywine’ heirlooms and the hybrid ‘Early Girl’. I know an heirloom cherry tomato and a ‘Cherokee Purple’ are hiding in there, but beyond that, I’m at a loss.
By late July, the tomatoes were coming almost as hard and fast as the golf-ball-sized hail that had shredded my hostas in early June. I was jubilant. The lessons of this summer’s bountiful patch? I learned to pick tomatoes when they’re still pink, and let them ripen indoors. (‘Green Zebra’ is ready when it’s tinged with gold.) That way, they are less likely to be attacked by hungry mice, moles, and people. Also, I learned to plant my tomatoes in the ground, not in pots. If they lean on each other, you don’t have to stake them constantly. And tomatoes like it hot and sunny. Judging from my success, this must have been an incredible summer for people who actually know what they’re doing with tomatoes.
The biggest challenge has been watering. Tomatoes must have even moisture. In mid-July, the soaker hoses I’d carefully snaked through the melon and tomato patch got lost in the undergrowth. I couldn’t find the end that hooks up to the regular hose, so I had to switch to an overhead sprinkler. I’m not looking forward to my husband’s reaction when he sees the water bill.
My soil was in good shape for growing vegetables, thanks to the former compost heap. It’s going to be hard to resist planting in this same place next year. Alas, tomatoes won’t do well in the same plot of soil twice in a row. I’m not sure where I’ll move them, but I do know I’ll be putting ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelons in their place, because this year’s watermelons turned out to be cantaloupes after all. We opened one up and discovered the familiar seed cluster in the middle, though the meat around the seeds was the color of honeydew instead of pinkish orange. It wasn’t honeydew. It was cantaloupe, which takes a while to mature—as much as 90 days. Cantaloupes don’t develop their characteristic grayish-brown netlike skin until they’re well along, which is what had me fooled. I guess I owe that guy at the hardware store an apology.
Produce Basics
Tomatoes
» Buy indeterminate vines if you want your harvest to continue well into fall. Remember, they’ll need staking, as they only grow in one direction. Get determinate (bush-style) tomato plants if you prefer less fussing and don’t mind the fruits coming all at once.» Stagger harvests by planting according to maturity dates. Check the label and then take into account the age of the plants you’ve bought and the time of year before penciling in “harvest time” on your calendar. Good bets for tomatoes that mature early (65 to 75 days): ‘Celebrity’, ‘Early Girl’, and any of the cherry tomatoes.
» Space plants as the label directs; tomatoes placed too close together are more susceptible to illness.
» Keep them evenly moist. Uneven moisture is one cause of the dreaded blossom-end rot.
» Rotate the location of your tomatoes each year so the soil has a chance to recuperate.
Melons
» Bone up on how melons look at various stages of development before leaping to the conclusion that your cantaloupes are actually pickles, squash, honeydew, or watermelons. Cantaloupes don’t look like the ones in the produce aisle until pretty late in the game.» Harvest melons when the stem is beginning to shrivel up and the opposite end of the melon is soft.
Herbs
» Deadhead herbs constantly or they will bolt (go to seed) early, and you will lose a lot of good eating to flowering as they prepare to make seed for the next generation. Cilantro is especially quick to bolt. —B.B.Bonnie Blodgett publishes The Garden Letter and is writing a book about smell.
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