Halona melons

Our 2021 garden: the weather was not willing

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We did not get the predicted thunderstorms last night, though we did get rain. While I was out doing my morning rounds, I could hear thunder around us, and it was even starting to rain a bit by the time I was done. So, no work was done on the garden bed I’d started on yesterday. We had rain on and off all day, so hopefully those bottom layers got a good soaking.

A few more of the Mongolian Giant sunflowers have started to open up. If the mild temperature continue, I hope to at least see some Hopi Black Dye sunflowers open as well, before the first frost hits. Some areas in our province have already had frost in August, but so far, we are good.

I am really hoping that first frost holds off for quite a while, so that these Red Kuri squash get a chance to mature. Our first frost date for our area is Sept. 10; just over a week from now. From the looks of our long range forecasts, we will continue to have very nice overnight temperatures; cool, but nowhere near freezing.

I especially would love for the Teddy winter squash to have a chance. Yes, we finally have fruit developing on them! Again. I found three of them this morning. Where the Red Kuri/Little Gem squash ripen to a deep orange-red, the Teddy are a mini acorn squash, becoming a deep green and only about a pound in size. The critters have been staying away, after using the cayenne pepper all over the garden beds, even though we have no been able to re-apply the cayenne due to the rain. I am hoping that, having gotten a mouth full of pepper, the critters have learned to associate the garden beds with “ouch”. :-D If we can keep them away, these are supposed to be a prolific variety, and their small mature size should mean they may have a chance to fully ripen if we have a mild fall.

After checking the outside of the squash tunnel on the winter squash side, I went through the inside of the tunnel and found something waiting for me!

One of the Halona melons had dropped to the ground! I am so happy with how they are doing. :-) Of course, after finding this, I checked all the others, but none were loose. After I finished my morning rounds, I made a quick trip into town to run some errands, then headed out again later to meet a friend. While I was gone and there was a break in the rain, the girls picked the beans and some summer squash – and found two more Halona melons on the ground! I’m a bit surprised that it’s only the Halona melons that are dropping; the Pixies are still hanging in there. Literally! :-D

My friend and I went to the local Farmer’s Market this afternoon, and I had a chance to talk to my neighbour that sells pork – this time with a budget, and I picked up some sausages. :-) We had a chance to talk for quite a while, and I’m really looking forward to being able to get together with them. There are quite a few things they are doing that I would like to do as well, and I am eager to see their methods! And, from the looks of it, I won’t be able to go back to the market this year. Starting tomorrow, our province is imposing medical apartheid. With nothing to justify it, either. If we want to go to any “non-essential” places, we will have to show our papers to prove we’ve gotten the double jab for Schrodinger’s virus. The jab that works so well, those that have already got it are going to have to get a third one, while still covering their faces and remaining in physical isolation from other human beings. Our government doesn’t actually have the authority to impose such segregation, but they’re doing it anyhow, and people are being forced to comply through threats and coercion. Most illogically, while those who can’t have, or decline to have, the jab are now barred from doing things like buying food from a farmer at a market, instead of in a grocery store, the market vendors themselves are not required to have the jab. The levels of psychological manipulation and behavioural modification from our politicians and in the media, including social media, have gone into overdrive and, sadly, many people are getting sucked in and don’t even realize it. The levels of bullying and verbal abuse I’m seeing online has also increased substantially, in just the last few days. In typical gaslighting fashion, the same people who are doing the bullying are also the same people virtue signalling about how, if we don’t like it, don’t take it out on the poor employees trying to enforce the (illegal) restrictions. The obvious implication being that people who disagree with anyone being forced to partake in medical interventions against their will are the bullies when they voice their objections.

Meanwhile, another neighbor of ours I only recently met in person had an accident almost a week ago, breaking his neck. He requires surgery but isn’t getting it, nor is his family allowed to see him. They are literally denying him health care right now, because he is declining medical certain medical procedures that are unnecessary. Our health care system sucked before this, but now, it’s gotten beyond ridiculous.

Ugh. I was talking about my garden. I didn’t intend to go into a rant. It’s part of what we’re dealing with now, though, so I’m leaving it there.

I am so incredibly thankful that we are living here on the farm, and not in any urban setting. When I came up with the sub-title for the blog, “Sometimes you need to go back, to go forward”, I had no idea how true that would be.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: morning surprises

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

While doing my rounds this morning and checking the gardens, I was pleased of fine a really big Madga squash ready to pick. After being seasoned with cayenne pepper, the groundhogs are leaving the summer squash alone and they are finally getting a chance to grow! There were even a few zucchini to gather.

The few sunflowers that are opening up are, of course, looking gorgeous!

So far, it’s still just the Mongolian Giant sunflowers with seed heads that are opening. Too bad it’s so late in the season, but we’re still enjoying them.

I had my first little surprise while checking out the squash tunnel.

A little, ripe Halona melon, just sitting on the ground! :-D So of course I had to check the others that were turning colour, and found the biggest one was ripe, too. The only reason it hadn’t fallen of its vine was because it was already sitting on the ground. :-D

Then there was my second little surprise.

The Tennessee Dancing Gourd vines are starting to die back, revealing two “huge” gourds we had completely missed seeing before!

This is about what their full size would be, I believe. Gosh, they are adorable!!

Our morning harvest!

What a difference in size between the two ripe melons.

I am so happy with how these are doing. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Perfect!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night, we went ahead and had the larger of the two Halona melons that were ripe enough to come off their stems.

When we taste tested our first melons, they were too early.

You can see how green the inside of the rind is, in both the Halona (top) and Pixie (bottom) melons.

What a difference three days can make!

There is almost no green visible, and the knife just slid right through. It was also incredibly juicy! After scooping out the seeds, there was enough juice in the cavity, it could be drunk!

The flesh was smooth and soft, but not so soft as to be mushy. The flavour was very much a cantaloupe flavour, and llightly sweet. The small size makes it perfect for a late night snack, too. :-)

Since it was so nice and ripe, I’ve kept the seeds to clean and dry for planting next year. It is definitely a melon worth growing again!

The Re-Farmer

One last post for the day – just for fun!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

How can you tell it was nice out today? I got so much done outside to post about! :-D

I just wanted to share some of my finds today. Like this adorable little guy.

The tree frogs seem to really like the sacks we’re using to grow potatoes! I keep finding them, all tucked in and napping. :-)

Though we have almost no grapes at all this year, the few we do have are managing to survive and ripen.

I am just loving how the colour is changing on this squash! Our one and only winter squash. Though there are many little ones growing, even if they don’t all die off as they have been, I don’t think there’s enough growing season left for them to fully ripen.

The melons, on the other hand…

The Halona melons turn orange as they ripen! I’m sure that was obvious on the seed packet photo, but I didn’t even think to look.

There was something I missed completely when I took this photo, though.

I saw another one that was starting to turn colour, too, and lifted it to check the weight, only to see the stem come off. So I went back to the first one and realized it was completely detached from its stem already!

Aren’t they adorable?? <3

After picking one of each melon type to taste test, and they both turned out to be under ripe, I look forward to seeing how different these ones taste.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: onions harvested, first melons, and more carnage

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Today has turned out to be – so far – not as hot as predicted. On the down side, the smoke came back with a vengeance this morning. It has gotten better since then, thankfully.

While heading out to move the sprinkler, yesterday, I spotted Butterscotch and her brood.

I’m not sure if this is Bradicous or Chadicous. Either way, he’s adorable!

While tending the furthest garden beds, Butterscotch and her babies went through the squash tunnel on their way to the neighbour’s farm across the road. So much space they could have gone through, and they chose the squash tunnel! :-D

I also saw a lot of birds in the garden. They were appreciating the water on the ground from the sprinkler!

I decided to pick the two biggest, oldest melons to check them out. The one on the left is a Halona melon, and the one on the right is a Pixie.

Here, the Halona is at the top, and the Pixie at the bottom.

First thing I could tell is that they were not fully ripe yet. So we knew, when we taste tested them, that they were harder and less sweet than they should be.

They were still very tasty, though. General consensus is that we like the Pixie a bit better than the Halona, though it was really hard to pick one as better than the other.

With the weather predictions including thunderstorms over the next few days, I decided it was time to harvest the rest of the onions.

The canopy has been moved over the picnic table, so that’s where we set up the screens to lay them out on.

The screen with the fewest onions on them are the ones grown from sets I bought locally. About half of those had already been harvested earlier and are hanging in the root cellar.

The red unions are the sets we got from Veseys, and the screen in the middle has the onions we grew from seeds. These will stay outside until the soil is dried enough to brush it off and trim the roots. At that point, I will decide if I will leave them under the canopy to cure longer, or set them up in the root cellar. It will depend on the weather.

This morning, we are finally seeing yellow petals on the sunflowers! Most don’t even have heads developing yet. The Mongolian Giants are the only ones with developing heads right now. Given we’re in the second half of August right now, I don’t know that we have enough season left for them to develop. The sunflowers in the fields we pass are not only in full bloom, but today I drove by a field where the seed heads are already past blooming and starting to dry up.

In checking the rest of the beds this morning, I found this carnage in the purple corn.

Quite a number of stalks have been knocked down to the ground. From the looks of it, I think there may have been a cat fight in here or something. This is not the damage of a critter trying to eat the corn. I had to head out, so I left it until later today, when we’ll head out to clean up the mess. Hopefully, when it’s a bit cooler.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

Today I made a run to the nearer little city to do a Walmart run and pick up some more cat kibble, among other things. The smoke actually got thicker the further south and east I drove; most of the smoke we’d been getting before was from fires to the north. We are now getting predictions of possible thunderstorms starting tonight, which would go a long way to helping with the wildfires. I’m debating whether we should do an evening watering of all the garden beds or not. Some beds, like the tomatoes, got done already. Though we didn’t reach the predicted highs, I still had to run the hose into the rain barrel for a while, to get rid of the hot water, first. Otherwise, it would have scalded the plants. After letting it run, our well water still is not getting cold like it usually does. Even our ground water is warm! Which means there’s no danger of shocking the plants, I guess. I watered the potato bags, and those looked like something went crashing over them, too. Those, at least, can handle it better than the corn!

This year’s gardening has certainly been a learning experience.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more brightness

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The predicted rain never came today, but then, neither did the predicted high of the day, so I went ahead and watered the gardens in the late afternoon.

Having mentioned the Ozark Nest Egg gourds in my previous post, I just had to get a picture when I found this.

A single Ozark Nest Egg flower blooming. Still no gourds, though; all the buds appear to be male flowers, so far. There is nothing on the nearby Thai Bottle Gourd at all. If there are any flower buds, I can’t see them. The down side of having to add the mesh over these is that we can’t reach under it to handle the plants with undoing part of it!

While the Ozark gourds are still just starting to reach a point where we can train them up the fence, the nearby cucamelons have shot their way to the top of the fence and are looking for more height! They are such fine, delicate vines, and you can barely see many tiny little yellow flowers all over them.

Many of the flowers have teeny little cucamelons under them. :-) They are such prolific plants!

Speaking of prolific, the melons are certainly attracting a lot of pollinators to their many flowers! This is one of the Halona melons.

I love how incredibly fuzzy the baby melons are!

I decided to count what melons I could see. Not the little ones like this, but the larger ones, at least the size of a golf ball. I counted a dozen Halona melons, and another nine Pixies! If they keep up with their blooming, and their ratio of male to female flowers, we could potentially have a lot more than that, if they have enough growing season to fully mature.

There’s always that “if” factor, when it comes to gardening, isn’t there? :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: morning in the garden, and FIRST ONE!!!!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

You know, I think we actually got a bit of rain last night! I didn’t have to water the garden beds this morning.

To start, I found something really, really exciting this morning.

Our first ripe tomato!!!!

There it is, hiding under some leaves. :-)

Our very first Spoon tomato!

From the photos on the seed packet, this is a really big Spoon tomato. :-D

I am saving it for my older daughter, for whom I’d bought the tomato seeds as a gift, to have first taste. The girls are still keeping reversed hours, so my older daughter can work in the cooler night hours without the computer overheating, or her drawing tablet glitching out, and sleeping during part of the day. I can’t wait to see their faces when they see this!

Other Spoon tomatoes are starting to turn colour, too, so we should be getting lots more over the next while. :-) The Mosaic Medley mix of cherry and grape tomatoes are still very green right now, but they should start ripening soon, too.

One of my favourite things to do during my morning rounds has become checking on the squash tunnel, training more vines to climb the mesh, and seeing what progress there is.

It looks like one of the luffa flower buds is starting to open. I actually expected this to do better in our current heat, since they are a warm climate plant. Or at least start flowering and growing fruit before any of the squash and melons, considering how much earlier it was started indoors.

One winter squash plant in particular is growing a lot more enthusiastically than the others, climbing the trellis on its own now, and producing fruit. I keep forgetting which is which, but the other winter squash seems to have a growing habit more like summer squash, and seems to have only male flowers and buds right now.

The Pixie melons are getting so “big”! They are a “single serving” sized melon, and really dense for their size, so I don’t expect them to get much bigger than this one, here.

This is the first Halona melon to develop, and you can see how it’s outer skin is starting to form that distinctive cantaloupe texture. These should get about double the size and weight of the Pixies, or more, when they are fully ripe.

I can hardly wait to try them!!

Yesterday, I found that I thought was, maybe, kinda, possibly, a pea sprout emerging from the soil next to one of the purple corn.

This morning, there is no doubt at all. There are peas sprouting all over the sweet corn beds! I’m actually quite impressed by the germination rate so far, considering the bag of seed peas had been in the storage bin by the water barrel through two heat waves.

Now, if we can just keep the woodchucks from eating them all, not only will they help fix nitrogen in the soil for the corn, but we might even get peas in quantities sufficient for harvesting. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: morning rain, and solution found

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

For the past while, we have been pretty much constantly checking the weather radar. Yesterday evening, it was getting discouraging, and the predicted overnight rain kept getting pushed back and the weather system passed us by to the south. This morning, however, I was thrilled to see a system pushing rain right over is. Granted, based on the radar images, we should have been raining right at that moment, but at least we weren’t going to be missed entirely.

We did get at least some rain last night, as the ground was still damp when I came out to do my morning rounds. It even started raining while I was out there! A very light rain; the sort of rain that, had I not been outside being rained on, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was happening, but still, it was rain!

While checking the furthest garden beds, I was accompanied by Creamsicle Baby, who has finally started to allow us to pet him again. Frustratingly, when the cats follow us around those beds, they have a terrible habit of going into the pea trellises. This morning, I had to chase Creamsicle off the pea plants he was rolling on, only to have him come right back and start playing with the trellis twice, pulling their pegs out of the ground and getting tangled in them!

Even as I checked the garden cam this morning, I saw Butterscotch going through the pea beds, all four kittens following along, and every one of them went through the pea trellises, running, bouncing and rolling around.

Those poor peas just can’t seem to catch a break!

Other things, however, are doing quite well.

I’m really impressed by how well these Hope Black Dye sunflower transplants are doing. These are from the ones we tried starting indoors, but never germinated until well after we’d direct sown the other half of the seeds outdoors. The seedlings have pretty much quadrupled in size since they got transplanted. I don’t expect them to have a chance to reach maturity, given how late in the season they got transplanted, but part of the reason we grow sunflowers is as a privacy screen and wind break, and these might still accomplish that. Assuming they don’t get eaten. This morning, I saw deer tracks in the soil at the very ends of two bean beds, but no signs of anything new critter damage, so here’s hoping!

Every time we go out to these garden beds, we can’t help but check on the melons. They are getting so big!! This variety isn’t supposed to get as large as, say, the cantaloupes we see in the grocery store, but they are still supposed to produce lots of 4-5 pound fruit. The Pixies are supposed to reach about 1 1/2 pounds in size. I’m really, really excited about these. Melons are among my favourite foods, but we rarely buy them, as they are a treat, rather than an essential.

One of the challenges we’ve been having as been with the potatoes. Since discovering some critter damage, we unrolled the feed bags we’re growing them in to full height. If these had been indeterminate potatoes, we would eventually have done that by continually adding more soil, but these turned out to all be determinate potatoes, so there is no advantage to doing that.

Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing to support the bags, and the plants kept flopping over. Especially while being watered. If we had mulch, we could have added that to help fill the space and keep them from flopping over, but we don’t have anything right now. At least it’s been working to keep critters out, but some of the bags were flopping over to the point that I was concerned the stems would all break, and they’re still in their blooming stage.

Last night, I think I found a solution.

This is how they looked this morning, so it seems to have worked!

What I’d done is cut small holes near the tops of the bags, then tied them together with twine. The double row was tied together in groups of four, while the bags in the front were tied in groups of three. Then, just in case, extra twine was run around the front, tying them to the chain link fence. So now, the bags are holding each other up, while also protecting the plants from critters. It’s just insects we’ll still need to keep an eye on.

Hmm. One down side of finally getting some rain. There are some storms passing to the south of us, which means we’ve lost internet. The WordPress editor’s autosave has been spinning for a while, and once that starts, it doesn’t recover even once the connection is back. Which means that I can’t save my draft, and once our connection is up again, I’ll have to open whatever draft was last autosaved, then copy and paste whatever got missed into it, before I can publish it, and close this window.

Oh, the internet seems to be back again! Let’s see if I can publish this!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: corn, melons and new critter damage

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We have been very excited by how well the Montana Morado corn has been doing. However, as some of the stalks have gotten taller, they have started to fall over. The soil around the plants seems to be washing away as we water them. So, this evening, I added more garden soil to the bases of each one.

While watering these, my daughter has been focusing on giving a deep watering into the paths in between them, then using a finer spray to water the entire bed, so as to prevent more erosion. A couple of the stalks are also supported by stakes.

We are very curious about what the cobs will look like. Some of the stalks, silks and tassels are very purple, while others are varying shades of green. These are all supposed to give us corn so dark a purple, it looks black. But is that what we will get? We shall find out! It does look like several cobs are filling out nicely. :-) I’ve taken to hand pollinating every now and then, just to be on the safe side.

Meanwhile, while watering the squash tunnel, my daughter found another little melon!

At first, she thought one of the ones she’d found before had fallen to the ground, but then she saw they were both still there, so she lifted the third melon onto the structure. This had me looking around for more, and I was very excited to see two of these.

Tiny little melons, juuuust starting to form!

This is awesome!

I checked the other melons, squash and gourds. The summer squash is getting nice and big, and I might even have a couple of squash to pick tomorrow. The other melons and the winter squash have flowers and/or buds, but no fruit forming. Same with the Crespo squash. The luffa isn’t even showing flower buds, but it is climbing the trellis.

Then we went looking at the tomatoes (so many fruits are forming!), and they are doing great. The tiny little onions we planted under them are still tiny and little. :-D I noticed this morning, however, that a couple of self seeded (likely from the bird feeder) sunflowers seemed to be gone. This evening, I looked again and found their stems, leaves all eaten away. *sigh* More of the flowers in the bed nearby have not only had their heads eaten away, but in one area, even the stems are being eaten. We will not be getting many blooms out of that bed this year!

That reminds me: it looks like a lot of our French Breakfast radishes have been eaten, too. Possibly grasshoppers.

When checking the cucamelons, it looked like some of them had lost a few leaves and vine ends, too! They’re such small, fine plants, though, it’s almost hard to tell.

Then I saw this. :-(

This is the Thai Bottle Gourd. We had the one transplant, and a second seed germinated next to it. Now, the little one has lost most of its leaves, and the big one has lost a couple, plus a couple more leaves are partially eaten.

No damage to the Ozark Nest Egg gourds. Which is good, but we have more of those!

Very frustrating.

This year’s garden has been such a mixed bag of stuff going well, and stuff going badly, due to critter damage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden; made in the shade, and we have melons!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

While doing the evening watering, the girls spotted a couple of little melons last night! I just had to go looking for them this morning.

Aren’t they adorable?

The bigger one is about 2 inches long. I wasn’t expecting them to be fuzzy. :-D

These are the Halona melons. Still nothing among the Pixies – at least not that we can see. Lots of flowers, though.

In thinking of how to protect our Crespo squash from being nibbled on, and our new sprouts from the upcoming heat, I scrounged in the old garden shed and dug up some old, bent up, decorative wire border fences.

Most of the sections went around the Crespo squash. Whatever has been eating them has not tried to go past the hoops, so I’m hoping the new border will further dissuade it.

The ground here is so rocky, I wasn’t able to push all the wire “legs” into the soil! Enough are in to keep it from falling over, though, so it should be fine.

There were a few sections left, and they got used in the garden bed that doesn’t have a row cover on it. Then I used some bed sheets as shade covers. I neglected to take progress photos, though. :-/

There were 6 individual sections that got evenly spaced over the seedlings. The bundle of fencing had been tied with a fairly long ribbon, so I used that to join the tops of as many of the middle ones as I could. As I was laying the sheets down, though, there was nothing in the centre to support the ends. I had a short piece cut from a hula hoop left, so that’s now in the middle, on a couple of sticks in the ground to hold it up. It was too short to bend well, so there’s a kink in the hula hoop piece, but at long as it holds the sheet up, I don’t care! :-D

After that, rocks and bricks were used to pull the fabric taught and weigh it down.

For this bed, I could use some old Twin sheets. For the other two, I had some queen and kind sized sheets to use.

The one top sheet was easy enough, but the fitted sheets needed to have their elastics cut off, and one of them was cut in half and used to cover the ends of the rows. With these, the fabric could be secured by tucking it under the wooden frame. The sheet that was cut in half is barely wide enough on one frame, and a few inches too narrow on the other, but the ends are tucked, and in the middle of the row, the other sheets were laid on top to hold it in place.

So now our shade-loving seedlings have their shade, and protection from the heat of the day. We can uncover them when we start the evening watering, so they get some less direct light during a cooler time of the day. Then I can cover them again when I do my morning rounds.

We’re supposed to start hitting 30C/86F and higher, tomorrow, though the hourly forecast on one of my apps says we’re supposed to hit 32C/90F this afternoon. The record high for today is 33C/91F, set back in 2002. I think we were actually living in this province again in 2002, though I believe we moved back in the fall. The record low for today is 9C/48F, set in 1993.

Anyhow, we’re supposed to stay about 30C/86F for almost a week, and these sheets should help keep the seedlings a bit cooler. I’m considering whether it would be a good idea to moisten the sheets, too, but the extra weight of water might be too much for the frames to hold.

It should be interesting to see how these work out!

The Re-Farmer