A Surprise Volunteer

A week ago or so, something caught my eye in last year's melon bed. I glanced down and thought I saw a group of sprouted sunflower seeds. That wasn't a surprise, given the close proximity of this bed to the bird feeders and our large active chipmunk population. But last Sunday I realized there were more sprouting seeds and I took a closer look. Imagine my shock when I discovered that these weren't groups of sunflowers but instead clumps of young Watermelon plants! Last year I grew "Blacktail Mountain" watermelon here. They did quite well. I didn't get around to harvesting the last few melon and they sat here and decomposed throughout the Winter. So combine non-hybrid seed with extremely early warm weather and you get a bed full of volunteer watermelon plants!

Monday Harvest Recap- It's Pumpkin Time!

Our crazy, warm sunny days continue here in Oregon. Today I took advantage of the lovely weather and harvested all of my squash and pumpkins. The Winter Squash this year was pretty much a bust simply because I got the plants in the ground too late. But the pumpkins, which I grew from seed, did really well. While I was a bit disappointed in only getting 2 pumpkins from two plants, I was really happy with the size of the two pumpkins that did set.

• Pumpkin "Howden" - 22.8 lbs & 29.4 lbs
• Winter Squash- "Delicata" - 2 lbs. 1.6 oz.
• Watermelon- "Blacktail Mountain" - 12.2 lbs.

Now that the show season is over, I get to relax and share my dahlias with family and friends. Because I didn't get my dahlias completely planted until the middle of July, my dahlia garden is now if full bloom in mid-October. With sunny, dry, warm weather in the long term forecast, these bouquets won't be the last that we enjoy this year.

Monday Harvest Recap - Watermelon Edition

The exciting harvest news this week was that I harvested the first watermelon from my little watermelon patch. My 3 "Blacktail Mountain" plants set four melon this Summer. Two melons set in July and another two set in August. This melon is from the first flush and I think I might have waited a little too long to harvest it. I will have to see what my taste testers think. But nonetheless, I am happy to have grown a watermelon to full maturity in Oregon. This guy weighted in at 6 lbs. 15.2 oz.

I continue to see a steady ripening of fruit on the tomato plants. I did have some splitting damage this week, I am sure due to the rain we finally received. The damage was minor but you can see it on the two "Esterina" cherry tomatoes pictured on the truss, above. This week's harvest:

• "Galina" - (63) 11.9 oz
• "Mountain Magic" - (27) 1 lbs. 2.4 oz
• "Matthew" - (27) 9.3 oz
• "Esterina" - (63) 10.3 oz
• "Matina" - (22) 10.1 oz

"Mountain Magic"

I also harvested my second round of "Mystery" peppers. These are the peppers that were suppose to be "Padron" but clearly are not. They are a hot pepper and the plant is very healthy and vigorous. This week's harvest was (11) more peppers weighing in at 3.8 oz. They are headed off to become some fiery salsa.

More Watermelon Weather

Today was day one of a 3-4 day heat wave that is hitting our area.We topped out at 100 degrees today and the next few days are suppose to be even hotter. This of coarse means lots of watering every evening after work.

As hard as this weather is on most people and plants, there are a few plants that really thrive in the heat. Among them are watermelon. I have to say my three "Blacktail Mountain" melons are growing like mad right now. I swear the vines are putting on an addition 2-3 inches a day and they have started setting baby watermelon in the last week. Today I added wooden boards underneath the small developing melons to protect them from moisture. I counted 5 melon and the vines are just covered with blooms and new growth. I am going to continue with my every-other-night organic liquid fish fertilizer program. The plants look really healthy. There is no signs of the curling leaves and stunted growth that I experienced last year. If there ever was a year I should be able to grow a successful watermelon, it would be this one.

Amazing Watermelon Growth

Just 10 days ago, I took a picture of my 3 "Blacktail Mountain" watermelon plants. All three plants were still circle shaped and had only begun to form their first running vine. What a difference now!  On each plant, the runner has grown inches every day. It felt like I could almost watch the runners move across the dirt. All three plants have also now sent out multiple new runners, so soon this patch will be covered in watermelon vines and foliage. But most exciting is the appearance of tiny yellow blooms and immature watermelon. Pictured below, is the very first melon I found on any of the plants. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the first melon has set and begins to grow.

Early July in the Kitchen Garden

Now that July has arrived, I have finally finished planting the Summer crops in the Kitchen Garden - I think. It has been so very hot the last two weeks, but for the most part, the plants have come through with flying colors.

I spent some time Sunday re-building my onion raised bed. My watering had eroded one side badly. The onion bulbs were getting quite exposed and most of the water was just running off the bed. So I built up the right side once again and leveled off the top. The onions are much more stable now and my watering is more effective and much less wasteful.

Here's a nice "Candy" onion. I should be able to start harvesting them in the next month.

And here is a "Cortland" yellow storage onion. I am hoping that they will start to size up now that they are receiving more water.

My garlic has done terrific since it was planted last Fall. With the hot weather, I think I am going to harvest the "Chesnook Red" plants this week. They are already half brown and fading fast.

The large "Russian Red" plants are still 2/3 green so I will wait another week or so until I dig them up to cure.

I pulled out the lettuce a few days ago and amended the raised bed in which it was planted. Then I set in two "Bush Delicata" plants. I didn't cover them with remay and I am paying the price. It looks like the finches have eaten out the growing tip on one of them already. Sigh. Now I need to decide what to do in its place.

My two little "Butternut" squash have finally settled in and are putting out some nice, green new leaves. This week's forecast calls for temperatures in the 80's, so that should be a little kinder to them as they get established.

My two "Howden" pumpkins are really taking off. One has already toppled over and is starting to crawl and the other isn't far behind.

The three "Snow Crown" cauliflower plants appear to be surviving this heat wave. All three have white crowns of various sizes.

I am a cauliflower rookie, so I need to read up on them a bit more and see when I should harvest the crown. While they aren't perfect, I am pretty pleased with my first attempt at growing this finicky vegetable.

Both of my pepper plants appear to be on the way to a great growing year. They certainly should be loving the  hot weather. Pictured above is my "Gypsy" Sweet Pepper.

I now have two nice size "Gypsy" Peppers maturing on the plant.

I am growing a "Padron" pepper plant for the first time. It too is doing really well and is covered with blooms and nice, new branching foliage.

This is the very first "Padron" pepper on the plant. It just started to grow a few days ago. Hopefully it is the first of many.

The mixed variety Morning Glory plants have almost reached the top of their tower and are starting to put on a really pretty display each morning. Once again, even with thinning, I have a good mix of pink and purple blooms.

I put the second tier of the towers on my last three tomato plants this past week. I did it in the nix of time. As you can see, two of them are already half way up the second tower.

The original three plants that I put in the garden have almost reached the top of the second tier and it's only early July! And my "Heavenly Blue" Morning Glory, planted in between the tomatoes, has reached the top of its support and is now scrambling over the tomato cages. So far, it hasn't yet bloomed.

A truss of "Mountain Magic".

The  young "Matthew" tomatoes definitely have a plum shape.

The "Esterina" is starting to set fruit.

"Galina" has always been a reliable producer for me and my co-workers love it.

Here are two green "Matina". All of my tomato plants have now set fruit except for my "Mexico" plant.

After I removed my empty Potato grow bag this past weekend, I planted two of the "Hale's Best Jumbo" Muskmelon that I started from seed. They look pretty small right now, but its still early Summer and the weather has been very melon friendly this year.

My three "Blacktail Mountain" watermelon plants are really starting to take off. All three plants developed their first runner this week, so their growth should really explode. I am trying to be vigilant and fertilize them every other day.

I certainly have just about every size of beet possible in my two rows of  "Golden" beets that I planted. You would never know that they were all started from seed at the same time. I do have some fairly large ones now, so I need to harvest a few this next week and give them a try.

The "Gold Coin" cipollini onions continue to look good. Since this is a new-to-me variety, I am not quite sure how they should be progressing. But since they don't grow up into a huge globe onion, I think they are right on track. Also growing under the remay tent, in the kitchen garden annex, is a row of "Cabernet" red onions. They aren't too happy with their cramped growing conditions and are still pretty small at this point in the season.

Early Moonglow Watermelon Harvest

 

Yesterday I harvested my "Early Moonbeam" watermelon. It was certainly an interesting learning experience growing watermelon for the first time.

I couldn't have had a better Summer for my first attempt. It was extremely hot and dry for the Pacific Northwest; we set a record for the number of days over 90 degrees. But I learned watermelon plants need more than heat. I needed to provide my plants with more water and more fertilizer than I first thought.

Without daily watering, my plants only set 4 fruit and the leaves started to curl. The plants were very much alive but essentially stopped growing.

Once I began a regular fertilization program and watered everyday, the plants took off again. The vines started branching like crazy and I had a strong second flush of blooms. From that mid-September flush, the plants set 9 more fruit that grew faster and larger than the fruit set in the first flush. None of them hit the 5-8 lbs. mark that the catalog described, but they were closer! Unfortunately, since they set so late in the season, they didn't have a lot of hot weather to help produce sugars and sweetness. Still, I was happy with my first try at growing watermelon. Here are the final numbers. I harvested a total of 13 watermelon this year. The largest was 3 lbs. 1.3 oz and the smallest was 12.3 oz. The average size of the watermelon harvested was 1 lbs. 14.70 oz. and my total harvest weighed in at 24 lbs. 15.6 oz.

Watermelon Weigh-in Week #3

I am a day late this week with my weekly watermelon weigh-in. Life happens. So here are this weeks totals and the net gain of each melon in the past eight days:

• Watermelon #1  1 lbs .3oz , a gain of 4.23 oz
• Watermelon #2  12.4 oz.,a gain of 2.9 oz
• Watermelon #3  1 lbs. 3.2 oz, a gain of 8.4 oz., this one gained 1/2 a pound this week
• Watermelon #4  6.2 oz , a gain of 3.1 oz, so it doubled in size this week

So, the good news is, I now have two melons that have broken the one pound mark. The bad news, only one melon had any substantial weight gain this past week. It was a cooler week, with a bit of rainfall on two mornings. The heat is suppose to return this next week, so hopefully the melons will respond. They have a ways to go to hit 5+ pounds.

Watermelon Weigh-in #2

A week ago I wrote about my concern with my four "Early Moonbeam" watermelon plants. I decided at that time to weigh the set fruit each week, to verify that they were consistently gaining in size. A week ago I had three "larger" melon and one baby one that had just set. I weighted the three bigger melon; the largest was just 7.2 oz. Here's this week's results

• Melon #1   11.8 oz.
• Melon #2   9.5 oz
• Melon #3   10.8 oz
• Melon #4   3.1 oz

So, my melon are growing, just not as fast as I would hope ( or think that they should). One of them did grow 1/2 a pound last week, so that is a good sign. They just need to keep it up if they ever going to reach the projected size of 5-8 lbs. I will continue to water them daily and add a liquid fertilizer a few times a week to the water. The weather is suppose to be in the 80's next week after a brief cool spell the next few days. Come on melon!

Watermelon Worries

Each year I like to try and grow something new. This year I thought that I would give watermelon a try. I did some research and discovered that there are quite a  few varieties which claim to grow quite well in northern climates. I chose "Early Moonbeam", a yellow fleshed melon. It is described as "early, productive, very sweet and delicious". How could you go wrong with that?! Even better, it was hybridized by Dr. Alan Kapuler just 30 miles to the north of me. If it could grow well there, it ought to grow well for me.

I started four seeds in the green house and set out four healthy starts in some rich compost in May. They grew well. Our weather turned warm and the vines were off and running. But sometime in the month of July, the leaves started to curl. They no longer lay flat. I researched this on the internet and all I could  find was some nutrient deficiencies described. So I have been fertilizing the plants with a liquid solution regularly now for over a week and I can't tell any difference. I can tell that some of the vines have quit growing and the tips of them are turning brown. Hopefully this won't affect the vines that have melon already set on them.



I am excited to have some small melons. Right now there are three growing and another that just set. I decided to weight the three tonight and then weight them each once a week to see if they are still steadily gaining.

So here are the August, week #1 results

• Melon #1  7.2 oz.
• Melon #2  4.9 oz.
• Melon #3  1.5 oz.

They have a way to go to reach the catalog description of 5-8 lbs. We certainly are having the perfect weather for watermelon this year. I can't remember a Summer with any more day over 88+ degrees like we have had this year. Paired with warm nights, it ought to be just perfect for them.