My vegetable garden came about when I decided to, as they say, make lemonade from lemons.

Opportunity knocked when the health department called to say someone had complained about the compost heap I keep in the side alley. So, to salvage neighborhood relations, I determined to turn the sore spot into a garden plot.

Initially, I asked my gourmet-cook husband to join me in a trip to the farmers’ market to buy heirloom seedlings and the herbs we always grow in pots. (I’ll try anything to get him interested in gardening.)

Then it clouded over, and I ended up at the hardware store on the corner that this year was featuring heirloom vegetables. I bought 12 tomato plants in six varieties, including the fabled Brandywine. I purchased only indeterminate plants. These are vines that don’t stop growing once they’ve produced a crop. I wanted my tomatoes to keep coming as long as the weather allowed. To that end, I also loaded up on plants with early maturity dates. That means cherry tomatoes as well as Brandywines.

Some plants on the shelf below the tomatoes caught my eye – the pictures on the labels, that is. Melons. The plants themselves (two per pot, male and female) were no taller than my thumb and had two leaves each.

My dad was a melon addict and used to take us kids to the fruit stand once a week in summer to load up on melons as well as corn, raspberries, strawberries and whatever else was sweet and in season. Dad had a killer sweet tooth.

That the hardware-store melons were plain old cantaloupes didn’t bother me. Dad’s more exotic types were unreliable and prone to rot. Besides, my real desire was to see melon vines flowing extravagantly, almost like leafy green rivers, bedecked with pretty yellow flowers and the odd (I mean really odd), fuzzy, pickle-shaped protuberance that is the melon embryo. I’d seen this only in magazines, and I couldn’t wait.

I’d heard that melons like to climb up fences, but that’s not why I put a fence around my side-alley vegetable patch. The fence was to keep the tomatoes upright and to frighten off would-be thieves – animal and otherwise. In front of the vegetables as a further deterrent, I planted a row of thorny hybrid tea roses that Jackson & Perkins had asked me to trial.

BOUNTEOUS FRUITS

The melons have fully carpeted the fenced-in area, and their vines are excavating a trench under the wires to get outside. They’ve pretty much eliminated the fence from view. That isn’t hard when you have leaves as big around as dinner plates.

Behind them, the tomatoes have grown so tall I may need a stepladder to pick the high hanging fruit.

This has been a great summer for vegetables if you have a sunny spot and a long soaker hose. I’m thinking of asking one of the many entrepreneurial 8-year-olds in the neighborhood if he’d like to hawk my tomatoes and melons along with his lemonade.

I’ll stop bragging and pass on some tips:

I just placed one of the elongated melon embryos in a nylon stocking to give it support, as the vines do want to climb up the fence rather than hug the dirt.

Melons and tomatoes need intense heat and sun.

Tomatoes like it a lot better in the ground than in pots. A former compost heap is a great place to plant them because they’re heavy feeders. I add tomato fertilizer occasionally.

Blossom end rot on tomatoes – identifiable by a black spot on the fruit where it leaves the vine – is caused by uneven soil moisture.

Harvesting tomatoes when they’re just turning pink stimulates more blooming and protects the exposed fruit from hungry varmints. Ripen them indoors at room temperature.

Weeds compete with any plant for nutrients and water. During this dry summer, I’m trying to keep the patch weed-free. That’s not hard when the neighbors who used to glare at me when they looked at my compost heap are now stopping by to chat.

I’m adding a postscript because you deserve to know the whole truth: My hardware-store melons turned out not to be ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelons, not cantaloupe. When I called to ask if anyone else had watermelons instead of cantaloupe, the “gardening expert” on duty passed the buck. Somebody at the nursery wasn’t paying attention when he inserted the labels, he said. “Must’ve been Friday afternoon or something.”

I declined the offer to return the plants for a refund. Maybe I’ll take them some watermelon.

Bonnie Blodgett, who lives in St. Paul, writes a garden column for Midwest Home magazine and publishes a quarterly newsletter, “The Garden Letter: Green Thoughts for the Northern Gardener.” She can be reached at bonnie@gardenletter.com.

THIS WEEK’S CHECKLIST

Pick tomatoes as they turn pink and let them ripen indoors at room temperature. That way, varmints won’t be tempted, and disease will be less likely. Plus, picking stimulates more fruiting. (Indeterminate tomatoes keep going indefinitely; the bush varieties come all at once and then call it quits for the season.)

Keep annuals looking fresh by deadheading and cutting off bedraggled foliage. Remember: They need more water in dry weather. Don’t overfertilize to compensate for lackluster performance – plants stressed by drought shouldn’t be asked to perform miracles.

Speaking of dry, look up and check out those trees. They may be feeling the heat, too, especially newcomers to your garden that haven’t established extensive root systems. Put the hose on them if their leaves are yellowing or falling off.