Fred Miller

I’m showing my friend Cricket how to grow vegetables by giving her two rows in my garden and helping her plant and tend them.

I learned as a boy from helping my parents in the garden. Things that seem so simple to me are a complete revelation to her.

She was very worried about the potatoes we planted.

“They’re under the ground. I can’t see them growing. How will I know when they’re ready?”

She assumed each potato planted would make one new potato, which didn’t seem like much of a return. She also was under the impression that she would be harvesting vegetables about three weeks after planting. That only works with green onions.

She grew up a city girl, loving vegetables but never being taught how they are grown. I call her Cricket here because she has a good attitude about learning, chirping in delight to find out, for instance, that it won’t be quite the nightmare she imagined to tell her plants from the weeds.

“Remember, we sowed the kale seed in rows,” I said. “See all these little kale plants? They look alike and they’re in a line. We spaced the potatoes in a row, so just look down the row and expect every foot and a half to see a potato plant coming up. You’ll learn.”

Cricket said she wanted potatoes, kale, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, green onions, carrots, cucumbers, green beans, cabbage and a zucchini or two.

I nixed the carrots because I can’t grow them to save my life.

Kale, onions and peas are frost-hardy, and the potato vines take a while to come out of the ground, so all those we planted ‘way early, the end of March, leaving room in her rows for other plants and seeds to be added later. My own early potatoes were up and did get nipped by frost, but as I told Cricket, their strength is underground, they would come back.

Cricket wondered why we plant some things in the garden from seed, and others from already growing small plants, which we call sets, and how do we know which to do? I had to think a minute.

“Sweet corn would be impossible to start as sets because you plant so much, and besides, it doesn’t transplant well,” I said. “You can start cucumbers indoors, but seeding directly in the garden is easier and works fine.”

My wife Honey starts certain flowers (including impatiens, short zinnia, coleus, vinca) and vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, cabbage family) from seed indoors, under fluorescent grow lights, transplanting them to individual multi-packs when large enough. Her watering trays are big aluminum pizza pans we got at auction. She learned gardening as a girl with her father. When we first started talking to Cricket about having her own vegetables, Honey warned her she would need to visit her plants about three times a week to weed, check for insect damage and so forth. A couple of days after we planted our first seeds, Cricket dutifully showed up, hoe in hand, to begin fighting those weeds.

“Nothing has come up yet, not even the weeds,” I said.

I had her make a map of her garden as we planted, and mark the end of each planting with rocks or clods so we would know where they are, and can replant if they don’t come up. More than once I’ve plowed up a seeded row, forgetting I already planted it. I told her when we can recognize those little plants and they get a little height, I will use a garden tiller to cultivate between the rows. The loose soil can then be gently pulled around the plants, burying the weeds. Hoeing is much easier after cultivation.

I had told Cricket that the kale plants would need to be thinned out when they got big enough. When that day came it was traumatic.

“You talked about ‘thinning,’ but what is that?” she asked.

“They’re overcrowded,” I said, showing how to pluck out and discard excess kale seedlings.

“Oh! Oh!” Cricket exclaimed. “Those are going to die! My babies!”

When I checked later she had thinned the kale, though not as much as she should have.

“I did the best I could,” she said sullenly.

Reaching into my bag of wisdom to sum up, I told her, “The secret to gardening is doing the right thing at the right time.”

“But how will I know what to do and when to do it?” she asked woefully.

Ah, that’s the thing, isn’t it? If she sticks with it until she tastes that first garden tomato, perhaps she’ll make a gardener after all.