Red gold for the backyard garden

Ross Collins | The Accidental Gardener

Houses in the Upper Midwest often feature a fair-sized back yard. We have space here, space to grow. That applies to families as well as to plants, and one popular approach to that grassy back canvas is to develop a vegetable garden.
That requires some work, but once we have a nice square of that great Red River Valley soil all ready to go—after adding a few bags of compost—the big questions loom. What do we plant and when do we plant it?
Well, the answer is obvious. Tomatoes, of course. Who would not want a big red, juicy orb just seconds off the vine, unobtainable in any grocery store or even farmers’ market? Okay, I don’t even like fresh tomatoes particularly, but one from our own garden, well, that’s red gold. (As one commercial canner actually calls them.)
But let’s pause a moment. We need to zone out. USDA agricultural zones, that is. This area used to be a solid Zone 3. Now we are considered a soft Zone 4. That means a lot for backyard vegetable gardeners.
“The time is here when we can safely seed the so-called ‘tender’ vegetables which can’t stand frost,” my mother Dorothy wrote in a 1978 column, May 21, to be exact. What vegetables would those be? “These consist of all the ‘melons’—cucumbers, muskmelons, pumpkins, watermelons, squash both summer and winter types, all beans, sweet corn and popcorn.”
What is missing from that list? Tomatoes and peppers, Dorothy noted, are the ultimate tender vegetables. Others may tolerate a hint of frost, but as for planting these two, “perhaps not for another week.” Unlike the vegetables above, we start these outside from plants, not seeds. Why? “These two vegetables require a long growing season,” she explained, “so we need the head start early planting indoors provides.”
You can save money and grow hard-to-get varieties by seeding yourself indoors in flats underneath grow lights beginning about six to eight weeks before May 15, when we usually are past frost danger. But that requires special attention. They are tender and not ready for prime-time, and so need “hardening off.” My mother recommended setting the flats of little plants out under a protective shade tree in the daytime, and taking them in at night, particularly if temperatures drop near frost zone.
You can expect that tomatoes from the local nurseries and big-box stores will already be hardened off and ready to plant. As the accidental gardener (and so a bit lazy), I rely on local nurseries that most certainly know what they’re doing when it comes to everybody’s favorite vegetable. I have risked popping the plants into the garden about May 15, but if it’s chilly they don’t do much anyway. Dorothy recommended around Labor Day, and though we are not as cold now as during her prime writing days, probably that advice is still prudent.
So is that it? Not that simple, Dorothy noted. One, if your tomato plants have become spindly, plant that spindle. Make a trench, put the whole stem into it, cover and leave just a tuft of tomato at the top. The stem will grow roots and produce a stronger plant.
And then there’s the water. This spring has been dry. We may see a decent rain by planting season, preferably one of those soft all-day soakers and not a thunderstorm that pummels the young plants out of their new homes. “It seems a little early in the spring to get out the garden hose,” she wrote on May 16, 1971, but “newly planted vegetable gardens and flower seedlings will perish under drought conditions.”
Dorothy always planted tomatoes, but didn’t usually stop with a monocrop. One year she tried pumpkins and winter squash. “I thought I had given them plenty of room,” she wrote. “As the summer wore on, thy covered everything in sight and began clambering up the flowering crab trees. In desperation they escaped through the fence and began covering the neighbor’s backyard, too. So I gave up.”
Dorothy also warned about cucumber vines not behaving. But there’s nothing like a fresh garden cucumber! Okay, “many gardeners do grow cucumbers on trellises,” she suggested. “They need a little training and attention, but they’ll do well this way.” Or you can do as the accidental gardener does, and let ’em rip, even into the neighbor’s yard. I tell them they are welcome to pick anything that comes their way.