Tag Archives: muskmelon

Onion and Broccoli Harvest – 5/22/2023

Amber pulled up the onions. Some of there were huge. I think onions are year-to-year the easiest crop we grow. She rigged up some wire fence across a few saw horses and hung the onions on the wire fence to dry for a week or so. He plans on freezing some and storing the rest.

We also harvested broccoli, as the weather is getting too hot. The bugs are eating it up quickly and most of it has already bolted. Good eats though!

The tomatoes are getting really close to being ripe. We picked a few that are starting to turn red because we don’t trust the local wildlife to leave them alone. The bushes are getting really tall, to the point we are going to need to top them to keep them from falling over.

The melons in the backyard are growing well. Sweet corn seems to be doing well too. Okra, not so much. I sprayed it all with a foliar fertilizer (Hasta Grow) and I hope that helps. A big mistake from last year was letting the wild non-edible melon continue to grow. The seed it released is now germinating and I have hundreds of those plants growing, in and among my useful plants. Lesson learned: stay on top of the weeding!

We also harvested a few carrots (meh). The blackberries are starting to get ripe, but they are absolutely covered with moths and wasps. Some of the plums are starting to ripen, but they are all infested with bugs because I didn’t spray insecticide at the right time. And our chickens have been naughty and are hanging out and laying eggs in our raised beds. The local rat snake found the eggs and had a nice meal.

Garden Update – May 7, 2023

My oldest fruit trees along the west side are finally producing fruit! I wish I would have been on top of spraying them for insects though. I lost 7 young fruit trees from last summer’s heat and transplanted the 4 figs that survived in pots last summer.

A few of the blackberries are already starting to ripen. I’m surprised by the number of blackberry plants that have died off. Only the thornless varieties have died, the native thorned variety I have is multiplying faster than I can keep it trimmed. A wasp was occupying the fruit I was photographing.

The raised beds in the front are all doing great. The squash and cucumbers I planted a few weeks ago are all popping up and I’ve already thinned them out. I added a layer of old tree leaves as mulch. We need to hurry up and harvest the broccoli before it bolts. Onions are almost ready to harvest. The peas are putting out fruit faster than we can keep it picked.

In the back in-ground row-garden, all the mellons, corn, okra, and cover crop is starting to come up. I thinned out the melons today and tried to transplant some of them. We should have enough melons to supply the grocery store if these do well.

We planted 4 tomato plants in the raised bed in front of our house. This bed is usually just out-of-control mint. I’m happy to see the start of delicious tomatoes well on their way! We are having a hard time keeping the chickens out of this bed though. The love to hang out and dig around.

tomato
tomato

Warm Season Vegetables Planted – 4/16/2023

I tilled up the in-ground garden and hilled the soil into long rows.

in-ground garden: tilled, then hilled, ready to plant

I planted 14 varieties of melons, some okra, and corn, then spread ‘cover and color’ mix in the remaining area.

Next we moved in wood chips to fill the valley’s / walkways, then we watered the area well in hopes all the seed will germinate.

In the front yard raised beds, I planted 2 varieties of cucumber and 2 varieties of squash.

Hugelkulture Bed Update

This is year number 2 for the hugelkulture bed experiment. It still needs soil added to some areas where wood is sticking out. I have a lot of beans and melons planted. Most excited to see how the melons do!

Hugelkultur Status – April 23, 2020

The seeds I ordered from Willhite finally came in. We planted mainstream cantaloupe, yellow petite watermelon, jackson wonder speckled bush lima bean, Texas cream 8 cowpea, summer melody squash, honeybaby winter squash, and large sunflower mix on the north side of the bed.

We spread straw over the south side of the hill. The cowpeas, okra, melons, and squash I planted on April 8 are popping out of the soil now.

Hugelkultur – Okra, Comfrey, Cowpeas, Melon, Squash – April 8, 2020

I started planting in the hugelkultur bed today, and it was a little strange. Add a little water and you create an avalanche. So I tried a few things that seemed to work ok.

I took out a handful of soil, replaced it with compost, and planted okra in the compost.

hole formed in the side of the hugelkultur mound
hole filled with compost
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Melons and Okra Planted – April 7, 2020

I dug up the huge comfrey (bocking 14) that was in raised bed 3 and split it up into a bucket full of crowns. I planted one at the base of many of the fruit trees, and a bunch of them in the hugelkultur bed. I also planted a few melons (Ice Cream and Kajari), some lima beans, flowers, and 2 varieties of okra.