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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Here is a view of the main part of our (Patti and Sandy’s) back garden. To the left against the fence and not in view is the recycle bins I set up last week. Those have chard and broccoli seedlings.

In the picture on the left is four raised beds. There is rhubarb, sage, romano beans, parsley, kale, basil, thai basil, dill, four types of peppers, garlic chives and two varieties of summer squash.

The center where the best sun shines is two beds that have romano beans, lettuce seedlings, tomatoes, watermelon, butternut squash, garlic chives, thyme, tarragon, cucumbers, tomatillo, shallots and chives.

To the right are two more raised beds. Those have kale, romano bush beans, celery and potatoes.

Sounds like a lot but the yield has much to be desired because of our happy hazard ways of gardening and the deteriorating health of the soil.

This weekend, we totally rehab’ed one of the beds by digging out all the soil, lining the bottom with heavy plastic and cardboard to keep out the tree roots and returning the soil mixed with about 150 pounds of composted horse manure, some bone meal, potassium and humate. Wow, that was a job and a half! Only five more beds to go!

The new bed was watered down and covered with plastic. Today, I set up a frame to hang our squirrel/bird netting. Tomorrow I will set up a drip line using mini soakers spaced 12″ apart as that bed will be devoted to greens. I also plan to plant the Rainbow chard and Red Sails lettuce seedlings I had started from seed early in July. Of course we will also put down a nice layer of straw for mulch.

This fall when the tomatoes are done we will replace the two center beds with four new raised beds. One of the two old ones will stay in the center area and the other moved to join the ones on the right. This will pretty much max out the space.

With the new planting space, our commitment to growing most all our plant food and all that we are learning about creating healthy soil, crop rotation, companion gardening and optimal planting times we hope to triple if not quadruple our production!

Here’s hoping for a fuller greener view this time next year!

Let us know what you are growing in your garden

In memory of my Dad 8/6/92

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Since we’re trying to up our production, planning ahead is essential so I heeded the recommended Fall planting schedule for our growing zone – 9 – and started to sprout seeds for broccoli and chard.

Previously I didn’t have much luck sprouting my starts from seed – most of the time they didn’t seem to sprout or when they did the next day they would be nibbled to stubs or if they survived infancy they would look ‘leggy’ and fall over.

But since we’re trying to be more self sustaining, I researched the proper way to sprout seeds.

So my near proper way:
I started with clean sterile soil – in this case American Soil Local Hero.
I put the soil into my sprouting container – about 6 inches.
Sprinkled in my seeds, covered with a thin layer of soil and watered.

To keep my sprouting container from becoming a vermin buffet, I put a screen over the top.

A week or so after I planted the broccoli seeds

You see, last year, inspired by Robin who planted dozens of broccoli starts I decided to plant a few that I purchased.

Each day on my garden rounds, I would check on their progress. Each day they would grow and even started to bud! …until one morning I went out and each broccoli was nibbled down to a little stem sticking out of the ground!

Argh! Birds? Squirrels? Snails? Munching Bugs?
I didn’t know but curses! Foiled again!

As my seeds sprouted and started to grow into healthy broccoli starts I was more determined that ever.

Wow! using clean fresh soil helps – look at how healthy those look! Beats a handful of dirt full of weed seeds.

About 3 weeks after seeding

Time to plant the starts into their Fall and Winter home.

We created some new planting space from discarded recycle bins. The soil is dark clayish top soil mixed with lots of well composted horse manure. I topped with some straw mulch to keep it moist and warm.

This year, my aim is to outsmart!…
outwit!…
I shall prevail!
I have an opposable thumb and I know how to use it!

Our recycle bin planters lined up along the fence

Into the garage I marched. Drill – check; screws – check; level – check; deer netting – check; stakes – check…; oh and wooden clothes pins…you really need opposable thumbs to operate those

Before planting the seedlings I gathered up all my supplies to vermin proof the planters.

New home for broccoli and chard

I took the screws and attached them to the fence with a little gap to easily hang the deer netting.

Stakes prop up the other side for the netting to drape over.

Then clothes pins to keep the netting closed.

I planted the broccoli and chard resting a little easier at night…but who knows? Time will tell but so far so good.

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A healthy soil is teeming with a multitude of critters: microbes, fungi, nematodes, insects and worms. Since plants don’t have digestive tracts to breakdown the ‘food’ in the soil, all these critters work together to breakdown the humus or organic material and the mineral component of the soil for easy uptake by the plant’s intricate root system. It’s been said, When trying to grow the ultimate garden – two thirds of success lie in the ground.

Healthy soil is a must and something I learned early on in my gardening life. Although the last few years I’ve amended the soil most seasons, because of the lack of time and other commitments I haven’t been caring for the soil like I could have. This year for instance, I skipped my usual bag or two of steer and chicken manure in each bed – this I had learned from my grandmothers. This season, my conscience got to me – I didn’t know the source of the manures – likely from a large scale factory farm so I couldn’t or rather wouldn’t use those as my amendment any longer.

During Spring planting, we were short on our own plant matter compost so I used some in each planting hole along with some horse manure we had left from a run to the stables a few years ago. The result, this season’s garden looks like a vegetable garden from Lilliput – Not enough nutrients!

Look at these two tomato plants…the first was planted with a few scoops of compost in unamended soil. The second was planted one week later in an oak barrel with fresh American Soil’s Local Hero with a few shovel fulls of our plant material compost. There is a yard stick next to each plant – Plant #2 is four times larger than puny plant #1! Robin’s tomato plants are large and healthy as well – she carefully amended her soil as she does every year. Maybe she’ll give us her secret recipe .

I’ve come to realize that most of the soil in our beds are pretty lifeless – not much worms whereas a few years ago the soil had lots of red wigglers. Now that we are upping the ante and committing more time and energy into our garden, I have become obsessed with bringing our soil back to life. What I’ve learned and will now follow – the golden rules to healthy soil.

Golden rule number one – ammend regularly. Each bed must be amended after each crop no matter what you’ve grown. You can amend with plant matter compost or animal compost.

Golden rule number two – never walk on prepared soil. All those critters in the soil – they need oxygen. So nice fluffly soil is a must.

Golden rule number three – cover your soil with mulch even if you don’t plan to plant it right away. This keeps the weeds from taking over (sapping those nutrients you worked so hard to put in) and keeps the soil moist – you don’t want to dry out your bed as this will damage the soil structure.

Compost. Back in college, I had a plot in a community garden. As luck would have it, the gardens were situated next to a horse stable. We had mountains of composted horse manure a wheel barrow away. I grew some amazing veggies that year. Patti – our digital dumpster diver extraordinaire – found two stables nearby that are begging folks to come scoop up the horse manure.

Bingo! As much composted horse manure we can possibly use minutes away from our garden! So far we’ve gotten about 500 pounds of really nice ready to use compost. I guess that we’ll end up with another 1000 pounds before all our raised beds have been rehabilitated.

In our own yard. we have a Wiggly Worm Wranch which we got from StopWaste.Org and three compost bins – one was here when we moved in years ago and two were recently gifted to us from our kind neighbors. The worms are happy and doing well. Worm castings and worm tea are excellent soil ammendments. I’m also learning the fine art of composting. In the past, I’ve ended up with bins of smelly slim as the compost rotted because I had too much green material and not enough brown. Now my plan is to layer the kitchen scraps with straw and will toss in some uncomposted horse manure for extra measure. My goal is to get the compost pile to be hot – this tells me that the composting bacteria are doing their thing. I’ll be turning the compost regularly to fluff up the material putting in more oxygen thereby speeding up the process. Plus, it’s a great work out!

Mulch. Hands down our favorite is straw and we’re lucky enough to be 10 minutes from the race track where we can purchase the bales of straw.

All set. Now all I need is a strong back to work the soil back to health. What a great workout this gardening is turning out to be…and I was just considering finding a trainer…

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