Not long ago, I found one of the Summer of Melons Blend melons had turned yellow and was looking misshapen. When I picked it up, it fell of the vine. Technically, that should have meant it was ripe, but it didn’t look ripe. We haven’t cut it open yet, though. Too much other stuff going on.
Just a little while ago, my daughter and I did a sort of Florida weave to support the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area. That didn’t take long at all. My daughter’s been working on commissions, still mostly at night, lastly, so she hadn’t seen the garden in a while. As we were looking at the melon bed near the tomatoes, I noticed one of them had turned yellow, and fallen off the brick that was keeping it from direct contact with the ground. I went to put it back, and discovered it had fallen off its vine completely!
How handy, that my husband’s giant self healing cutting mat is still on the dining table. 😄 You can see that it’s about 8 inches long.
In the next photo, you can see the stem end. That’s how it’s supposed to be with melons, when they are fully ripe.
We haven’t cut it open yet. We’ll probably do that – and the little one – this evening, so we can compare.
I can hardly wait to try it! Being part of the Summer of Melon’s blend, we have no idea what variety it is, but if we like it, I want to save some of the seeds.
While doing my evening rounds, I was able to take progress photos of the melons, winter squash, pumpkins and drum gourds, using my hand as a size reference, before losing the light.
I am just amazed by how many melons we’ve got! Instagram slideshows have a maximum of 10 images. For the East bed alone, I ended up with 21 images. This, even with images having multiple melons in it. There was at least one in the bed that I found as I was taking the photos!
Here are the photos, split up into three slideshows.
Then there were the ones in the West bed. I was able to catch multiple melons in a single shot several times, so this one got split into only two slideshows.
The second slide show include the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons. We’ve actually lost one of those, but there is a new one that looks like it will make it. Plus, there are more female flowers showing up!
There are even new female flowers showing up in the winter squash beds that I’ve been hand pollinating. It’s almost impossible for them to fully mature with the growing season we have left, but I just can’t help wanting to give them a chance!
There’s just the one that’s been getting bigger, but it seems to be starting to turn yellow, so I don’t know if it’s going to make it. As you can see, though, there are more female flowers blooming!
There’s just one that still has a tiny big of green on it.
I’m also really impressed with the Crespo squash. Not only have the vines themselves had a growth spurt, with huge leaves, and the vines spreading all over – including climbing a nearby cherry tree! – but there are more squash developing!
One is definitely a loss, but we’ve got two new ones along with the very first one that is getting all nubbly. There are more female flowers that have been hand pollinated – including one on the vine climbing the cherry tree – but it’s too early to know if the pollination took. Plus, there are more female flower buds that will probably bloom in a few days.
All this, and the only thing that’s been harvested is one winter squash that broke its own stem. Nothing is ready for harvesting, though some of the winter squash are close. With the melons, some of them are supposed to be early melons and we should have been able to already harvest some of those, but with so many things almost a month behind, that hasn’t happened yet. All the melons and squash are supposed to be short season varieties, but that wet, wet spring we had really set things back.
We have only 18 days before our average first frost date.
Looking at the long range forecast, the predictions have flip flopped again, and it’s now looking like we’ll, at the very least, have a first frost in the second week of September, with highs around 15C/59F and lows as far down as 2C/36F, which can have frost – but then we are supposed to climb back up to highs of 29C/84F and lows of 13C/55F.
I’ll bet if I look again in the morning, the long range forecast will completely change again.
Meanwhile, we are under a heat warning right now. Over the weekend, we’re expecting highs of 30C/86F, with the humidex at 38C/100F. The predicted rain and thunderstorms are no longer in the forecast, though other parts of Canada are getting thunderstorm warnings right now. It’s just not supposed to reach us, anymore.
Looks like I’m going to be watering the garden in the morning, again!
I have been aiming to get photos of the developing squash, pumpkins and melons every couple of days, with my hand in the shot for perspective. I was sure I’d last done this a couple of days ago, but once the photos were loaded onto my desktop, and I started doing the Instagram slideshows, I realized the last ones I did were three days so.
Oh, well. Not a big deal!
One thing I did not bother with, this time, was take photos of the drum gourds. There’s been basically no change in those, which suggests to me they’ll probably just dry up and fall off.
Which has happened, and is happening, to some others.
Oh! I just realized I forgot about the Crespo squash again. The bed it’s in is in the East yard, and nowhere near the others. Out of sight, out of mind! I did check it today, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much, but there’s a reason I include my hand in the shots!
We might be seeing a slowdown in the garden for a bit, anyhow. The last couple of nights have actually been cold, and it rained for much of today. As I write this, we’re at 15C/59F, and our high was only 18C/64F. It’s going to start warming up again, starting tomorrow, and get fairly hot over the next week. Nothing like the heat we were dealing with before, but hot enough that the garden should recover from the recent chilly nights! Wind gusts have been a problem, though. A lot of the corn stalks were blown over, some flat to the ground. I added twine supports around the bed, but I don’t know just how badly damaged they were. I’ll find out for sure if the stalks start turning brown and drying up! We’re so close to being able to harvest corn, too.
Anyhow…
If you want to compare with previous photos, you can check out these posts. (Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place!)
We actually lost one of the melons on this side, but I did include a new one that is getting big enough I’m pretty sure it’ll make it. There’s a few others that are getting bigger, but I’m still not sure about them, yet.
The West facing side doesn’t have as many melons growing on it… yet? I’ve been letting the vines sprawl among the onions on this side, and there may well be some I haven’t found under the leaves.
Next is the pumpkin and drum gourd bed – but no pictures of drum gourds this time.
Yes, one of those that looked like it was drying, finally broke off its stem. There’s one other that I think might be a loss, but we shall see.
The unfortunate thing was the large, round blue squash. It had a board under it, and was leaning against the log frame. When I found it, it had rolled onto its top and was sitting completely upside down. I went to flip it over, and the stem broke right off. I’m pretty sure it was already partially broken from when the squash rolled onto it.
We do seem to have another of the same variety in the other bed, though, so maybe we’ll still get one that fully matures before it’s harvested!
Not only was I pushing back leaves to try and get clear photos of the developing squash, but I also had to carefully lift the corn stalks that had been blown over, on top of them!
Last of all is the second melon bed, East side first.
On the West facing side, the single Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon hasn’t even dropped its blossom yet. I’m not seeing any other female flowers developing.
The rest seem to be doing quite fine and getting bigger.
Looking at the long range forecast, it seems that August will continue to be comfortably hot, right into the beginning of September. We might get away with no frost until the end of September. One can hope! I’ll take very frost free day we can get.
While driving around today, though, I heard on the radio that we are coming into a La Nińa winter. Which, for our area, translates into a cold and rainy fall, and a bitterly cold winter.
Like we need another one of those.
We were spoiled by last winter’s mild El Nińo winter, that’s for sure!
Well, we shall see what we get. I just really, really want the cold to hold off long enough for all these melons, pumpkins and squash to fully mature, after having such a late start this spring!
I was able to get some progress mowing the southeast yard. I was stopping and starting a lot to empty the bag. The area I was mowing is not infested with creeping Charlie, so the clippings went directly for mulch of the strawberry and asparagus bed, and around the sunchokes.
I’d gotten through maybe 2/3 of the southeast yard when I ran out of gas. As the engine sputtered and died, it backfired, which is the only thing I can think of that was out of the ordinary.
After filling the tank, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start.
I failed to start it several more times before I decided to let it cool down for a while. This has happened before and we were able to start it again after awhile.
As I waited, I puttered around with some other things around the yard, before trying again.
It still wouldn’t start.
Worse, as I was pulling the cord to start it, I could hear rattling noises.
I ended up putting it away in the garage and got the riding mower out. I decided it was worth a try to see if it would cut.
It wouldn’t start, either. The battery was dead again.
This battery was replaced just last year.
I put the charger on it, then puttered around the yard some more. Tried to start it again, but it hadn’t charged enough, so I went inside to have a meal.
The next time, it started fine, and I tried mowing.
I don’t know what’s going on with that thing. It will cut for a while, and then… not. As far as I can tell, everything is working the way it should. When it stops cutting, I can reverse it, then try and cut the stuff that was missed. Usually, it starts cutting again, but sometimes I have to reverse and try again a few times.
What makes it even more confusing is that when I got to the end of the strip, I would increase the speed to maximum and drive back to the other end, so that while cutting, the grass was always being expelled over grass that was already cut. I didn’t bother disengaging the mowing bed, and it was set lower than the push mower. While going around, and I could see the mower was actually cutting grass as I went over the grass cut with the push mower. However, once I was back at the taller grass and moving at the slowest speed, it would just for a short while, and then stop.
After a while, I just stopped. It was taking way too long and I was wasting too much gas.
So now we have a broken push mower, and a riding mower that doesn’t always cut. This is on top of three desktop computers in the household that had to be replaced, plus a laptop that is out of commission but will not be replaced. Which is also on top of having to replace the van, my mother’s car is making banging noises – and now has two flat tires, one of which has a broken bead at the rim and can’t be pumped up at all.
All of this is less than 12 months.
This has got to be the worse year for expensive things needing to be replaced or repaired – and things we can’t afford to replace or repair anymore!!
Well, I at least was able to end my time outside on a positive note. I did the semi-daily growth comparison photos of all the squash and melons.
I do see a couple of female flower buds near this one, but it will be a while before they bloom. This is on the side where two vines are growing. The third vine is growing between this new bed and the bed with the peppers and eggplant beside it. That one has shown no side of any female flowers, yet.
I did, however, find some tiny green Seychelle pole beans starting to develop on the trellis netting!
Next is the easternmost bed with the Summer of Melons blend of melons.
I had to split the Instagram slideshow photos into two batches. These is from the east facing side.
The problem is, I can barely see my screen in the light, so I couldn’t tell if the camera was focusing properly or not.
I had actually finished taking all the photos and was going back through the beds when I spotted another drum gourd, so I got a picture of that one, too. For all I can tell, there are more of them hiding among the leaves!
Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.
I found a new one on the other side, too. After I took the photos, I found a couple more pieces of scrap wood to put under them. As with the Summer of Melons mix bed, I can see quite a lot of developing melons that are still too small to be sure they are pollinated. There is certainly no shortage of pollinators, though, which bodes well for future productivity!
I was definitely feeling better by the time I was done going through the garden.
Now to figure out what to do about our broken lawn mowers.
It’s time for my progress report! If you’d like to see the earlier photos to compare, you can visit the posts from July 28, July 30 and August 1. Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊
I work my way from one end to the other, and try to follow the same pattern, so once again we start with the Summer of Melons mix in the future trellis bed.
This includes the new melons I found earlier today. I put bricks under the melons touching the ground, except the new ones. I’ve been training the vines of those on the netting, but they came loose, so they ended up on the ground again. I was hoping to avoid using more jute twine in training them, but tomorrow morning, I’ll have to make a point of bringing it with me when I do my morning rounds. I’ve got the wrong kind of netting for this. This finer netting is more for keeping birds out, but it’s what I had. The wider netting I’ve got the peas and beans climbing on would work better, as I could weave the vines around the netting.
As for the melons hanging above ground, some of them look like they’re going to need hammocks to support their weight soon!
There is one that’s looking more and more yellow. I suspect this is a sign that it is going to be a loss, and that it will start to shrivel or rot on the vine. We shall see.
These are the African Drum Gourds I’ve found so far. At this stage, it’s still possible they aren’t properly pollinated and might just dry up and fall off the vine. I hope not! If I’d spotted the female flowers earlier, I would have hand pollinated them, just to be on the safe side. Ah, well. I’m just thrilled to see any at all.
They have the softest fluff on their surface at this stage, too!
Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.
There’s a couple in there that may or may not make it, and one with a flower that will probably open tomorrow – and I’ll me sure to look out for it to hand pollinate it!
There are so many hidden melons I found among the leaves today! There is even what looks like the first female Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon about to bloom. There are no male flowers, though. Unless there is a sudden overnight burst of male flowers, this one won’t have a chance to fully develop. I don’t think it can cross pollinate with the other melons!
This being the beginning of August, I don’t think we’ll get any watermelon this year. Yes, it’s a short season variety, but just about everything is behind about a month or more. Mind you, this year has been full of surprises, so I guess anything can happen between now and first frost!
I love having things in the garden that let you see just how much growth is happening, in such a short time! Even with taking photos every second day, I can see – and sometimes feel – the difference. Then there’s finding new ones, hidden under the leaves like that. It’s like Christmas! 😄
I so look forward to being able to harvest and try these! Well, not the drum gourds, of course. 😄
This may be the strangest gardening year we’ve had so far, but in a way, I’ve found it to be the most fun, too!
The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.
The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.
The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.
Wow.
Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.
A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.
Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.
I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.
They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.
The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!
The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!
The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.
The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.
Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!
If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.
We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!
If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.
There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!
We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.
What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.
We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!
With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!
As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄
This is the largest of the melons that I’ve seen (there might be others, hiding in the leaves) from the Summer of Melons mix. This mix of seeds has early, mid and late season melons, and the early ones – whatever varieties they are – are definitely showing up in the trellis bed, where the first transplants went in.
I took one photo yesterday and the other today. What a lot of growth in just one day!
I think I’ll try and make a point of taking photos of the melons and squash more often, with my hand as a size reference. The winter squash and pumpkins has also been getting visibly bigger, from day to day.
Today, we reached our expected high of 29C/84F, but I didn’t notice what the humidex was at at the time. Tomorrow, we’re expected to hit 30C/86F, and the humidex is expected to reach 38C/100F. Our low tonight is supposed to drop to 17C/63F by about 3-5am. I’ll definitely be out early to do the watering again, while it’s still cool.
My husband and I had plans to meet a friend in the city today, but unfortunately, his pain levels were just too high. I am expecting to do our first stock up shop tomorrow, as CPP Disability is supposed to come in on Monday, and when the disability payments are due on a Monday, they’ve instead been deposited on Saturday. However, just in case, I went into town early this evening to pick up a few things to tide us over the weekend. There were some really good sales on, so I got more than planned, and was still in budget, which is always nice.
After what happened this morning, with having to bury 4 newborn kittens, every time I’ve gone outside, I’ve been looking all over, hoping not to find any more. After chasing some raccoons out of the sun room, I gave the cats their evening feeding, then stayed outside to make sure the cats got a chance to eat before the raccoons came back. There was one bugger that was watching me from behind a tree for a while, but I didn’t want to get too close to chase it off, as that would have scared away the more feral cats eating under the shrine. Tricky bugger! It did eventually leave, though.
Since I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, I kept moving around, eventually going into the West yard.
That’s when I saw one of the cats in the lawn near the old kitchen garden. They’ve worn a path in the grass from the lilacs behind where the tulip bed it, and the corner of the old kitchen garden. There was something in front of the cat that was still there when she ran off. Other cats also went to see it, so I had to check it out.
Yup. It was another dead kitten. It looked to be only a couple of weeks old, and had been dead for a while. It seems a mama was bringing it to the house and it didn’t make it, like the one I found in the old kitchen garden not long ago.
That’s 5 kittens I buried, in just one day.
It’s getting to the point that every time we go outside, we’re nervous about what we’ll find. With this heat, the kittens by the house tend to just splatter themselves all over, in the grass, on the sidewalk blocks, in the sun room, all stretched out and sleeping, and we have been checking to see if they’re breathing!
It’s Button that really gets me. He will sleep absolutely anywhere, usually in high traffic areas. Since he is so very tiny, and has a forever home to go to, I’m the most paranoid about him! I chatted with the Cat Lady today and we have a tentative date to connect on Sunday, if she is able to come out this way. Unfortunately, she just had surgery on one of her hands not long ago, and it’s been hurting a lot, so she might not be up to making the trip.
Hmmm… if I do go to the city tomorrow, I wonder if there is somewhere closer to her place where we could meet, and I can bring Button with me? I’ll have to message her and find out.
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
I had to be careful with some of the bigger ones, and their roots has made their in between the layers of paper towel.
All 21 of them got planted into the larger cell trays we’re testing out this year. Even the last one that just started to germinate. While I made sure to plant the seeds so they were not completely buries in the seed starting mix, the vermiculite added to the top does hide most of them. Which should be fine. They’ll still get light, and it’s so light, it won’t hinder their growth at all.
To make room in the aquarium greenhouse, the last tray of Wild Bunch winter squash got moved into the mini greenhouse frame at the window, and the remaining containers of seeds set to pre-germinate were moved over to that side of the aquarium.
Getting the tray with the planted seeds in it is always a pain, though. These trays are a bit longer, and the aquarium has a support running across the middle. The tray needs to be carefully tilted to get it in. It means waiting until after it’s set up before adding water to the bottom tray. The freshly planted seeds did get misted with a spray bottle, after the vermiculite was added, and the seed starting mix was pre-moistened, too, but once it’s on the heat mat, things will dry out quickly. The smaller celled trays we used before – the ones designed for the small Jiffy pellets – had openings in two corners, where water would be poured through. These larger celled trays fit the same base trays, but are quite a bit taller. Normally, that gives space to add water to the base tray from the side, making use of the gaps between cells. That can’t be done with it set up in the aquarium, so I had to move the tray of cells off to the side, add water to the base, then put it back.
I need to find a better way to do that. We have a funnel that is long and flexible that we use to put drain cleaner/maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain pipe. I think that would be long enough to work. The next time I’m at Canadian Tire, I’ll see if I can find another one.
I might be planting more in the next couple of days, though! The watermelon seeds look like 4 out or 5 have germinated, and the Sarah’s Choice melon seeds just sort of exploded. None were germinating when I checked this morning, and now all 5 are sending out little radicles! Even the Zucca melon seeds look like they will soon germinate. Nothing on the Pixie melons yet, though. When it comes time to plant those, they can all go into another of the large celled trays that I have. If the 100% germination rate keeps up, that will be another 10 melons, 5 watermelons, plus the 4 Zucca. That will leave a couple of cells to spare, which will make it easier to keep track of them.
Oh!! While doing a quick search to get the link for the Zucca melon, I found an article about some people in the Canadian prairies, like us, that successfully grew them! That’s encouraging, considering we’ve had I think 2 … or is it 3? … failed years with them. Last year was the most successful, but the developing fruit all suddenly started to rot on the vine, and I don’t know why.
Well, we’ll see how they do this year. Hopefully, we’ll have 30-100 pound/14-45kg melons this year!
We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.
As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.
All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.
The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.
Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.
The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.
For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.
The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.
The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.
I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.
The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!
The Re-Farmer 