Picks for Today (and how to pick a ripe watermelon)
Not a huge harvest considering our vermin woes…
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.
