Garden Finale

THE GARLIC IS IN!! Eight rows of cloves from three different varieties, phew! We had our water heater go and woke up to a wet basement Saturday morning. This was followed by a new television purchase which required some weekend warrior type work before it could be installed, so the garlic once again went on the back burner. While sowing the cloves I realized they are all soft neck, so no yummy garlic scapes from my garden next summer. (Me pouting.)

The predicted low temperature for this evening is a crisp 32 degrees, so all that was harvestable was harvested. Many fruits were not mature- eggplant, winter squash, and melons. Many of the vines were dying so there was no sense in leaving them. The largest of the muskmelons had begun to rot (top right in the photo) and I could smell it's sweet aroma as I approached the trellis. Too bad we never got to sample any of the many, many melons that eventually began to grow. Rumor has it an immature winter squash can taste better than summer squash so I will put this theory to the test and let you all know what the verdict is. The potato bed was harboring some renegade potatoes, the roots kept putting out tubers with out any foliage. The former tomato bed is littered with tomato seedlings which I find interesting since the seeds I sowed are no where to be found aside from a few fortunate spinach survivors. Go figure.

I decided to pull up my Carmen pepper plants and hang them in the basement. Why you ask? I believe I read one can do this somewhere in an effort to ripen them further. I am hoping so since there are at least a dozen peppers there. Have I completely lost it?!?!

Wait for it.........

Holy Mother of God it is an actual MELON!! And it has grown into the chain link! I spied this fella while watering the garden this afternoon, squinting into the sun light thinking I must be having a garden hallucination. But no! There really was a big green ball where a melon should be, so I dropped the hose and scurried over to inspect a little more closely- and to my surprise I found more! So the outrageously good news is that I have melons, the bad news is my vines are a diseased mess and have been totally neglected. Sigh.

I immediately went inside to mix up a fish fertilizer cocktail for the fruiting vines, followed but the removal of the worst leaves, followed by a spraying of Bonide (neem), and here is the really bad part- an innocent bumble bee flew into the path of my poison. In all my haste I forgot not to spray the chemicals while the bees are active. *@#&! I feel horrible. I sprayed my winter squash too (first), not thinking the pollinators will will stopping by all afternoon to do their business. Bee killer, that is me.

Guess I shouldn't have stopped watering those dang vines a couple of weeks ago. Or stopped caring that they were going down hill fast for that matter. I had given up any hope of melons this year after my prized baby stopped growing and withered. Boy was I wrong, lets just keep our fingers crossed these beauties ripen before the vines succumb to the dreaded powdery mildew and other such diseases.

The Summer That Never Was

June, July, and August 2009: 'The summer that never was'. At least that is what they are calling it over on Cape Cod. Today marks the last day of the Meteorological Summer. Officially there a few weeks left, but after a couple of evenings with temps in the 50's the final day of August certainly is feeling Autumn-like.

I went out to the garden this morning to find evidence of chores left unfinished....

This what happens when your weekends are over scheduled and you get behind on the lawn mowing and weeding thanks to all the rain (and the perfect beach day), and suddenly you realize you are already an hour late for a birthday party.

The Late Blight is really taking it's toll now, I expect this will be my last week of tomatoes. The fruit and stems are beginning to show evidence of the powdery spores. While picking the ripe fruit this morning I actually was OK with knowing these plants will be going soon, many people I know didn't get a single tomato out of their gardens, even the farmer's markets are scarce in some towns. I am thankful for the three months of home grown tomatoes I have enjoyed this summer. Below is picture of today's infected trimmings, another of the tomato harvest.

Here are my surviving winter squash plants, fighting to hold on despite the borer damage. If the buggers are done for the season then they may make it, but another attack would do them in. Two of them have formed new fruit, I am doing my best to not count my chickens before they hatch. I slit open the plastic mulch and covered a stem portion with soil, followed by a fish fertilizer cocktail to encourage new root growth. C'mon squash babies, GROW, GROW, GROW!

Speaking of growing, look at all these muskmelon vines growing madly in the compost pile and up the dog kennel....

And here is my single melon. Can I even call it that, lol? Should it instead be called "The Blossom That Never Died"?

Friday's Garden Buzzz

The muskmelon vines are finally starting to run. This is the horse manure compost pile experiment....still male flowers only from what I can tell. Four varieties of the melon seeds I planted were 75-80 day varieties (Green Nutmeg, Early Silverline, Noir des Carmes and Savor Charentais); the other, Eel River takes 90-100 days to mature. Back on May 25 I did a Melons and Beans Post (here) on the compost pile and dog kennel sowings/transplants. Here we are 81 days later, no melons in sight. Some sowings were seeds, others were seedlings 4-6 weeks old at the time of transplant. WTF?!? The only female flowers I have seen are on the 2 plants in a container- WAY past the 75-80 days (photo below). These were transplants and are running up the kennel walls.....maybe the plastic mulch has made the difference in these two vines? I don't see how I will get any ripe fruit which is so dissapointing seeing that I sowed 5 varieties of melons, I was really looking forward to homegrown melons.

Female blossom on mystery melon vine.

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Acorn Squash, the only variety setting fruit thus far. Other varieties are baby Blue Hubbard, Bush Delicata, and Butternut.
(All squash varieties are 90 days out from planting.)
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I have been watching my eggplants flower, hoping I would get a purple or green variety out of some of the seedlings. The seed packet I purchased was a mix of four varieties, and the first three plants to set fruit have all produced white eggplants. I am quite excited to finally have a purple one growing, YES! Notice the variation in leaf vein color in the plants below.....next year I will just check the color in the leaves as this seems to indicate the color of the fruit (and thus variety). Mystery solved!-well not completely since I still don't know what the green ones would look like. Sigh.

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The true BUZZZZZ around the garden......

Lastly, a sure sign that Fall is just around the corner:

Sedum getting ready to bloom.

On that note, have a great weekend everyone, we plan on perfecting our 'beach bum' act!

Pickles It Is!

I was surprised to find another handful of cukes ready for picking over the weekend so I whipped up a batch of refrigerator pickles tweaking the recipe just a bit to suit my tastes. SO EASY! And it turns out you just scrub away those nasty spines. I started out with a potato brush but that wasn't cutting it, so next I tried a popsicle stick (just happened to be there) and it turned out to be the perfect tool, go figure. I can't wait to try these bad boys, but I should probably leave them to soak for a few days first.

Well, leaving them to sit before tasting is no longer an option since after taking this photograph I grabbed a fork and had a warm pickle. I am a little embarrassed to show my lack of patience, but no regrets. Even when warm it was a tasty pickle. Very sweet with a bit of tang.

On a side note I planted more pole beans and carrots this weekend. The beans went in a raised bed and on a straw bale. The straw bale was originally planted with melons but critters took care of those for me. I am beginning to wonder if I will get one darned melon out of all those seedlings I planted.