Look! It’s our first ripe watermelon

Our little watermelon was finally ripe. I quickly cut it off the vine and brought it in the house for fear it get nibbled on.

Just how can you tell when to harvest a watermelon?
Well after a bit of research along with trial and error from last season, I found the best 3 clues are:

• when you rub your hand over the watermelon you can feel the ridges and bumps
• the closest curly tendril on the vine to the watermelon turns brown
• when you thump the watermelon it sounds hollow – similar to thumping your chest (be sure to test this out multiple times with gusto – comparing the sound of thumping your chest to the sound of thumping the watermelon…especially if your watermelon patch is in the front of your house)
• ok, there’s one more…the light color patch on the watermelon where it sits on the ground will turn from cream to yellow color

Cut the watermelon off the vine – and you know you’ve got a ripe one when the cut stem starts to ooze out a pinkish red ’syrup’…welll unless you planted a yellow or orange watermelon variety.

On other fronts…

Alas, the cucumber plants are nearing their last legs so I expect a few more until I pull them out. Those vines have some sort of disease so we won’t put them into our compost bin. I don’t want to infect the compost with whatever disease is ailing the cucumbers – this would have the potential to spread the disease when I use the compost to ‘enrich’ the soil in the future.

Despite the vermin eating a lot of our kale and lettuce we should have some to harvest next week. The vermin proofing has had mixed results. The vermin seem to mostly go after the amaranth flowers and are leaving the green leafies alone…for the moment.

I did, I think, stumble upon a great natural aphid spray. The vermin vinaigrette I sprayed on all the kale seemed to get rid of all the aphids! The kale is looking as beautiful and green as ever since the spray Well, as well as now growing in totally rehabilitated enriched soil!

We have a big weekend ahead getting some of our mobile pots planted.

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Offerings from the garden this morning. This is the second harvest for the tomatoes – last time was when we picked our first ripe one of the season – a full two weeks ago. That tells you what the weather has been like. The smoke from the 2000+ wildfires here in California filtered the sun quite a bit for the first two weeks of July and had quite an effect on the growth of the plants. Even with the hazy weather, I’m afraid the garden won’t be producing as in years past – more on why soon.

This time in addition to the Early Girl variety of tomato I got a few of the Celebrity which I had grown last year and loved for it’s meatiness – as in texture not taste.

So we also have some lemon cucumbers, a slicing cucumber, a globe squash (hidden under the tomatoes and cukes), a small handful of romano beans, basil tips and a bunch of my favorite dino kale.

Today I’ll be making a lentil and red quinoa soup so will add the globe squash, romano beans, basil and kale stems. The kale leaves will get a quick saute in extra virgin olive oil with some garlic that Robin gave me, then finished with a pinch of Redmond sea salt. Tomorrow I’ll make a Greek salad with the cucumbers, tomatoes and some mint from the garden along with some tasty Greek style feta.

Now, off to the stables with the gals for a load of compost…

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Here’s what I picked this morning before it got too hot – it’s expected to be in the 90’s today in Oakland.

We have 3 kinds of lettuce: Cos Romaine, Speckled Romaine and an heirloom variety Brune d’Hiver – it’s long leafed like a romaine but creamy like a butter lettuce – and it’s a beautiful red. There’s also a tiny handful of purslane. Some consider it a weed but it’s nice tangy addition to a tossed green salad and high in omega 3’s to boot

There’s also lacinato kale (aka dino kale, black kale, palm tree kale), a poblano chile pepper, a pickling cuke, a lemon cuke, a meyer lemon and some basil tips – all of these will be part of my V-10 juice that I will make today in our Green Star juicer.

Then for a nice saute with some basil or tarragon tonight there’s a globe summer squash, romano beans AND our FIRST ripe Tomato. Appropriately enough, an early girl.

This is a plant that we ‘foolishly’ planted in the first week of May during an unusually early heat wave. Then the cold hit and Patti cleverly wrapped bubble wrap around the first foot and a half of the bottom of the tomato cage. It kept the plant happy until the weather warmed up and it’s been growing disease free and loaded with tomatoes since.

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