Watermelons, Peppers, and Mowing Down the Garden.

Late Summer into Fall is harvest time and we're finally there. Last weekend I cut a watermelon that wasn't quite ripe. Today I found one that was. Picking a ripe one is tricky. They all look the same on the outside so you're left to thumping them and listening to how they sound. Supposedly the spot that touches the ground turns from white to yellow when they're ripe but that happened weeks ago. Some people say the vine starts to turn a little brown when they're ripe. That hasnt' happend at all. So I was left to thump them and listen for the one that went "plunk" instead of "plink". Not very scientific but it seemed to work.



These watermellons are "sugar babies". Smaller than the regular watermellon at about 12" in diameter. They are very sweet.

We also picked the peppers today. That half of my garden was used for all the leafy stuff that was done back in June. It's been pretty much forgotten since then except for me pulling a carrot to eat once in a while while I was out there working. The carrots are past their prime so all that was left to tend to on that half of the garden was the peppers. We picked them all today so I can mow that half down and not worry about it anymore.

We cut them up and freeze them in big chunks. Whenever we're making something that could use pepper, we pull a chunk out of the freezer, chop it up and throw it in the dish. We don't eat a lot of spicy food so this basket will probably last us until we harvest again next summer. There are several varietis of mild peppers here, mostly bell peppers. If we had waited a few more weeks, they would be all shades of yellow, orange, and red but I'm tired of dealing with them and green tastes just fine.

The world's most amazing squash squashed!

Fall's getting close and the garden's finally starting to pay off. I'm still eating grapes and expect there to be more varieties ripening over the next few weeks. The first round of peaches are gone and I got to eat a few.

Now the sweet corn is ready. I think we'll pick most of it this weekend and freeze what we don't use right away. Some of the ears have minor damage near the end from beetles but nothing that can't be trimmed off.



Still, I'm convinced gardening isn't worth it. I could have bought half a dozen peaches, a bunch of grapes, and a bushel of corn and been ahead.

The mystery vine growing along the house will probably remain a mystery. The only fruit growing on the vine was torn off of the vine yesterday. The details are sketchy but I know it involved an unsupervised toddler who, I was told, meant no harm.



It might have just been a boring old pumpkin. On the other hand, it might have been a new, undiscovered variety of cancer curing, anti-aging, unlimited fuel supply, high temperature superconductor squash. Now we'll never know.

Grapes

A short post.

Some of the grapes are ripe or very close. My Glenora seedless variety are just about there. I pulled of several of the ripest and they were good. Very sweet. Another day or two and I'll pull the bunches.

Glenora seedless

The concords are also close. The concords are only two year old vines. They look sparse but for two year old vines, they look good. Concords are the American dark purple grapes used to make grape juice. I don't think they're great table grapes.

Concord

I'm still waiting for two more seedless varieties (one of which has seeds) and two seeded varieties to ripen.

Mostly Pictures

It's been another busy week. I took a vacation week last week and spent this week at work catching up. Sometimes taking a vacation isn't worth it. I've neglected the garden even more than usual this week and it's a mess.

But here's an update anyway. Mostly just pictures.

The sugar sorghum I'm trying has put out seed heads. I'll cut it down in a few weeks and see if it's actually sweet.





I checked my garden this morning and set up some irrigation. My two remaining walking stick cabbage plants looked pretty good. They both had several large leaves at least 18" long and probably closer to 2 feet long. This afternoon, one of them has been eaten by something.





The vine that came up by itself in a flower bed is still unidentified. I thought it looked like a pumpkin but now it's got fruit and I don't know what it is. It's nothing I've ever grown before.





The fuji apple I cut down due to fire blight is putting out new suckers. I'm cautiously optimistic.





Something's been eating blackberries. I think it's a groundhog. At least he left me two.





The upside down tomato experiment on my porch is a limited success. It never got as big as I had hoped but it only gets a few hours of sun a day. It does have a red tomato.




The loofa sponge gourds are getting big. I'm not sure when to harvest or even what to do with them once I do harvest but this was my wife's idea so I'm off the hook. I also don't know how to spell "luffa" so I'll be trying out all possible spellings hoping I get one right.




And finally some of the grapes are almost ready. Several bunches are just raisins. I don't know why.

Why gardening might not be for me

I know this electrician. He owns his own business and spends most of his time working alongside his electricians on job sites. I supervise a crew of maintenance mechanics is several trades and spend most of my time on different sites getting my hands dirty too.

He told me a story about his neighbor that has gotten me thinking about my gardening.

His neighbor comes home every day and spends an hour or more tending his lawn. Mowing, spraying, moving paving stones, shoveling mulch, hand pulling dandelions, and probably lots of other stuff. My friend has a perfectly acceptable lawn but not nearly as immaculate as his neighbor's.

So the two bump into each other one weekend while working on their lawns. The neighbor starts giving my friend lawn care tips. He tells my friend how to kill the weeds, how to a little fertilizer would help, and that a load of mulch would take care of the weeds growing up around the shrubs.

My friend tells his neighbor "You spend your day sitting down behind your desk in your office and when you get home you want to spend your evening doing something with your hands and getting dirty. I spend my day working with my hands and getting dirty. When I get home I want to spend my evening sitting down."

Vine Borers, Cabbage Stalks, and Pickles

Yesterday I spotted a vine borer moth flying around the lone pumpkin that sprouted on its own in a flower bed. I had pumpkins wiped out by this bug a couple of years ago. It lays eggs near the base of the vine and when they eggs hatch, the little worm eats its way inside. Once in the vine,it just keeps eating and growing. Eventually it's eaten so much that the vine wilts and dies. That's how I found out I had them...one morning all my vines were wilted and dead.

When I saw this moth yesterday, I watered the pumpkin and added a little imidacloprid at the base of the vine. This is one of my favorite chemicals. It gets absorbed by a plant and makes the plant poisonous to bugs but not to us. One bite and it's dead bug. I don't know if it's approved for pumpkins but I won't be eating these anyway so I'm not that worried. Hopefully it will work.

We've had hot dry weather for a long time. We finally got rain last night. According to my rain gauge we got an inch and 7/10. That's a lot of water.




This morning is the first time in weeks that I don't hear a dozen large diesel irrigation pumps running at full throttle in the far off distance. Also noticeably absent is tap-tap-tap of a dozen large irrigation guns that we've been hearing and seeing in all directions. It's oddly quiet.

I have been growing "Giant Walking Stick Cabbage" as an experiment this year. According to the info that was in the seed catalog, these things grow a tall stalk with something similar to a cabbage at the top. The dried stalk is supposed to make a good walking stick. Right now these things look like big kale, and are just growing at ground level. No stalk. I have been expecting these things to make some sort of stalk with a seed head just like lettuce, raddish, spinach, and other similar plants will when the weather gets hot. Turns out I was wrong.

I did some searching and found out that to get the stalk, you need to remove the lower leaves. as long as you keep removing the lower leaves, it will grow taller and make more leaves. So this morning I removed the lower leaves. Now it's looking more like I expected.




Something's been cutting the leaves off of my peppers. Probably a leaf cutter worm of some sort.



Now for some of the good news:

I had my first peach this morning. Not as soft and ripe as I prefer but good enough to eat and actually tasted like a peach. We'll probably only end up with a dozen actually etable peaches between the fungusus, insects, june drop, and other problems but this is my first year getting any peaches so a dozen's better than none. (I almost said 12x better but everyone knows you have to multiply 0 by ∞ to get 12 but somehow a dozen peaches just doesn't feel infinitely better)

The pear I thought I was going to loose hasn't shown any signs of fire blight in a couple of weeks. There's still a lot of summer left so I'm not out of the woods yet but I'm hopeful. It's even still got a few pears on it.


And finally, I had enough cucumbers and dill to make a batch of pickles. I made some last year that were not terrible but were too salty. This year I changed the recipe a little and increased the amount of vinegar and only used half the salt. I used my own cucumbers and dill and had to buy garlic. I did spears, flat round slices for burgers, and long flat slices for sandwiches. We'll know if they're any good in 8 weeks.

Quote of the Day

My wife:

"you won't be happy until this is a super fund site."