Victory Garden

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Good gravy, man.  Are you, like, secretly enslaving Israelites or something?  The Man Upstairs seems to have it in for your family this year . . .

I'm beginning to wonder that myself.  But then I'm reminded of the "why bad things happen... " thread.

Why NOT me?

[Jane_Doe]

35 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

What was the seed?

The current one was have going is... I have no idea.  She calls it a "flower" and got it from school.

I still haven't figured out which things will grow well here (it's a high elevation, cold, short season).  

[Carborendum]

9 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:

The current one was have going is... I have no idea.  She calls it a "flower" and got it from school.

I still haven't figured out which things will grow well here (it's a high elevation, cold, short season).  

Send a picture of it.  I'll see if I can identify it.

[Carborendum]

RAIN AND SUN!!!  

Finally, the reward for enduring to the end.  We've been getting the perfect alternating rain and sun for our garden now.  I haven't had to water all week.  And we had plenty of sun as well.

Most of the nectarines are blooming like crazy now.

[Carborendum]

So, you can see two melon plants next to each other.  The one is directly to the left of my shoe.  The other is slightly forward of the first.

• They were both seeded around the end of December (30th/31st).  First sprout: Jan 15.  I don't know exactly what date these sprouted.
• I planted them around the last of February (clear of Snowmageddon).  I took this photo around the end of March. 
• My shoe is exactly 12" long out-to-out.

I've let a lot of clover remain to fix the nitrogen content of the soil.  I'll be bringing swamp water from the back of my property to help the fruiting after the flowers have been fertilized.

I've also planted two other plants in the backyard on the End of March.  I've got some sprouts that came up in just this week that I hope to plant on the first of May.  Then some more on the first of June.

I'll also try the first of July.  But I don't anticipate they will do well.  But it's an experiment, so...

[Carborendum]

So, this is the tree that I thought died.  And it mostly did.  There was a little bit of green higher up that died.  But the green now only extends about 2 ft above grade.

So, in another month or so I'll be trimming most of the tree off.  My wife says that the extensive root structure is more important than the extensive branches.  So, it is better to keep the tree than to buy another one and plant it here.

[Carborendum]

Here's the view of one fairly fruitful branch of my most mature tree.  And the chicken coop is in plain view.  I believe we still have 7 of them.

The branches show that I've got some good spacing on the nectarines.  I hope that means they will be nice and big.

This photo is a perfect example of why it is difficult to take good photos in the open sun.  You can't see the screen well enough.  I was going for a bit higher, where my thumb and the nectarine were both centered on the shot.

My thumb knuckle is about 1" wide at the widest.  So, this largest nectarine is about 1.4".

I've got to look up a good method of keeping the birds off of the fruit without resorting to netting.  That can get expensive.  It is also difficult to put on and take off.  But if I don't find some method, I could lose all my fruit.  Dang communist birds.

[Carborendum]

So here are my nectarines

That nectarine is about the size of a racketball.  The tree is almost the ideal shape for peach/nectarine trees.  I should get to trim the center the coming winter.  But they are supposed to be wide and flat.  Some of the heavy branches have grown too fruitful for the structure.  So, I'm holding them up with supports to allow the rigidity to set in while supported.  They're still sagging a bit too much.  So, I may have to reset the supports, or add more.

 

[Carborendum]

Here are my oldest watermelons. In the ground 2 months now.  Each main vine is 3ft long. 

Supposedly they should get from here to fully ripe in the next 30 days.  I doubt it.  It will probably get to full size vines in 30 days.  But it will take time for the GOOD watermelons to develop.

This next one has been in ground for 1 month.  It's my second wave.  Longest vine is about 1ft.

This one I planted just yesterday.  I am not confident this will survive.  But of the batch of seeds this is the only one that survived all the weather changes.

I also found one growing wild.  I suspect it was a seed that the chickens ate last year and has a promising future.  It is about the same status as the newly planted one.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Carborendum

[Carborendum]

Here is my latest batch.

I was very happy.  I planted four.  Four sprouted.  The cotyledons are all very strong and healthy.  The bottom right shows the true leaves opening in the middle. 

Here is my wife's squash patch.

The one in the front right is summer squash.  She has yet to grow one to maturity.  They tend to rot on the vine.

The other ones behind are butternut squash.  She was surprised at the explosive growth.  And she didn't know it would climb up the trellis.  The cucumbers are being overrun and struggling to get sun now.  We'll see if the butternut will stay on the vine when hanging on the trellis.

[Backroads]

In the spirit of water conservation and letting my lawn yellow and to heck with the parking strip, I followed a weird suggestion from a Facebook gardening group and will be growing melons in said parking strip.

So far they've sprouted like I have never had melons do. I'm quite excited.

[Vort]

15 minutes ago, Backroads said:

In the spirit of water conservation and letting my lawn yellow and to heck with the parking strip, I followed a weird suggestion from a Facebook gardening group and will be growing melons in said parking strip.

So far they've sprouted like I have never had melons do. I'm quite excited.

Pix or it didn't happen.

[Carborendum]

It looks like I'm about a month behind on everything.

• My first flowers appeared nearly a month later than they did last year.  I still haven't seen any female flowers yet.
• My one early plant had several things going on which hampered its growth.  So, it is later than they one I planted in April.
• My latest plants simply won't be producing this year.  They're due to harvest in early October.  I don't know how they will do that late in the year.  I'll leave them in and see what happens.
• And this experiment I did with the bags of mulch appears to be failing.

If only I had more time.  I'm so busy right now.  Next year, I hope to get it right.

[Carborendum]

So far I see one melon on each of 5 plants.  One plant died a 6th plant hasn't shown any melons yet.

[Carborendum]

Given the heat this summer, I thought I'd try an attempt at a second crop of watermelons.  But it's not turning out like I'd hoped.

This first one shows that my 1.5 month old plant is shorter than the weed that grew up just this week.

This other plant, however, seems to be progressing well. I have no idea why most of the growth is on one side only.  The three vines to the right have plenty of room.  But they are all dwarfed for some reason.  The two vines to the left seem full size.

You can see the male flower just opening up near the center of the photo

Female flowers will not show up for another two weeks.  So, the only way I'm getting a crop out of these is if it stays warm all throughout October.  That would be rare.  But it is a rare summer.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, we're getting a hard shift from summer to winter without much of an autumn at all.  So, we'll see if I get any more melons this year.

[Carborendum]

So, the experiment continues.  It now seems to be a race between the weather and the growth of the melons.

This first image is of the melon I've been watching since it was about the size of a pickle.  For scale, my shoe is about a foot long.

 

Now, you may not be able to see both of the melons in this next photo.  The big one (which my foot is pointing towards) is actually bigger than the one pictured above.  But I only noticed it a couple of days ago.

The second melon is almost entirely camouflaged to the left of my foot.  It is about the size of a REALLY large cucumber.

So far, the weather is holding out.  I thought that the sub 60 deg nights would cause damage or at least stunted growth.  But so far so good.

I'm treating the plant with two doses of Miracle-gro each week at a more diluted concentration than instructed.  I'm just hoping it will grow enough before Halloween.  I'm guessing that we'll have sub-80 deg highs by then.

Something happened while people were cleaning up.  I lost all my seeds.  So, if I don't get a plant with viable seeds this season, I will have to order new ones at that jacked up price.  Ugh.

[classylady]

Resurrecting this thread.

Last year I planted a couple of watermelon plants and I got a few small watermelons off of them.  The plants died after I did some vigorous weeding around them. This year, I only planted one watermelon plant. We will see how it grows. I’m not optimistic.

So far, this May and June, I have purchased 4 watermelons from several grocery stores, and one from a roadside stand. Every single one of them has been almost inedible. I am so disappointed! No taste or sweetness to them.  What’s everybody’s secret for picking out a good watermelon?

 

[Vort]

12 minutes ago, classylady said:

What’s everybody’s secret for picking out a good watermelon?

When I was a child, we would sometimes drive to Hermiston to pick out our watermelons. Mmmmm. Hermistons.

[Carborendum]

Contrary to popular belief, there is no way to tell through superficial means if a watermelon is sweet or not.  You can only tell if they are ripe or not.  And even then, some may disappoint.

Watermelon flavor (particularly sweetness) is primarily determined by variety.  The ones I've grown in my garden (as shown on this thread) were the Bradford watermelon.  And there are several things that need to be done during the growing phase to maximize the sweetness.

Recently, I was at the store and saw some smaller watermelons that were labeled with a sticker "Sweet".  I tried it.  And, sure enough, it was sweet, but not as sweet as my bradfords.  My son recently got another one with the same label.  It was merely "ok". 

If you're getting store-bought, it is a crap-shoot.  Unless it says what variety and where it was grown, you really don't know.

So, if you're growing your own melons, research the breed/variety of melon and see if they provide a brix rating.  This will tell you the approximate range of sweetness that this melon is capable of.  Anything above a 9 should be ok.  Above an 11 is fantastic.  The Bradford touts a rating of 13.5.  However, depending on cultivation and harvest, it could be as low as 10.5 and still be considered ripe.

Edited June 18, 2024 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

I planted something once.  The International Association of Cutworms, Rabbits, and Various Fungi were alerted, and took quick action.

[Carborendum]

19 hours ago, Vort said:

When I was a child, we would sometimes drive to Hermiston to pick out our watermelons. Mmmmm. Hermistons.

Hermistons tend to have a brix rating around 12.  So, pretty good melon.

[Vort]

25 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Hermistons tend to have a brix rating around 12.  So, pretty good melon.

I didn't know that many people outside of the Pacific Northwest had ever even heard of Hermiston watermelons.

[Carborendum]

23 minutes ago, Vort said:

I didn't know that many people outside of the Pacific Northwest had ever even heard of Hermiston watermelons.

I, myself, had not.  But it was easy to look up.