baby melons

This is a big challenge for me. I would LOVE to grow a juicy sweet melon this year. No luck the last few years. But the weather is perfect so far. Maybe I will be successful. My vines look long and full so far.

I have several types of melons growing this year: Anne Arundel, Crane, Charentais, Edonis (early Charentais type) and Sugar Baby watermelon. I don't know the variety in the photo, but I'm seeing lots of little fruits setting on my vines. I am looking forward to watching them. Once squashes set, they grow fast and my guess is melons are the same.

Read more ...

seeds in the mail

I often get requests from small seed companies to check out their seeds. Here are packages I received from Urban Farmer. Shirley poppies, Roma tomatoes and Large leaf Italian basil.

The packages are recycled magazines. They have a nice website to check out. Here's a link: http://www.ufseeds.com/

I looked up the poppies on google images and found: this link. Beautiful! I also looked up when to plant and it says fall or spring. I will save a place to put these seeds this fall.

Read more ...

Long Island cheese pumpkin

The stem of my big early Long Island cheese pumpkin was broken off completely today when I went to my community plot. This pumpkin set fruit midway up on my fence and the weight of it was more than the vine could hold. The stem broke part way through a couple weeks ago. It looks like its nearly ripe. Its mostly beige colored, with only a few areas of greenish tint. Very early for a pumpkin. I'll keep it on my kitchen counter for a month before I use it and I think it will fully ripen. This is supposed to be a very good tasting pumpkin.

I was pleased to notice today that the vines at the edges of my pumpkin patch are looking very dense and lots of small pumpkins are setting. The center of the patch looks bad. I guess that's just because the oldest leaves aren't so healthy any more. I also picked a fully ripe ad bright orange Baby Pam pumpkin today. Several more are ripening on the vines.

Read more ...

radicchio

I am very pleased with the radicchio I have this year. Even though only one in five plants headed, one head goes a long way. And its a beautiful red in our salads.

Most of my radicchio bolted - probably because the season warmed up so fast. My Chinese cabbage (Wong Bok), which is supposed to be a big head, didn't head at all. Just big furry leaves and then bolted into a big flower stalk. It made for lots of fresh greens for the compost pile. My savoy and red cabbage didn't have any trouble with the weather though. The savoy heads are ready for harvest, the reds will need a few more weeks.

This radicchio variety is Palla Rossa Ashalim (Botanical Interests) planted from seed on March 23. From the drawing on the seed package, it seems it should be a round head. Maybe my elongated heads are from the warm weather.

Read more ...

broken pumpkin stem

My big Long Island Cheese pumpkin stem broke, but not all the way off. It was growing half way up on my fence and, as the weight increased, it sunk lower. (I should have given it a support, but forgot.) Finally, the weight pulled the pumpkin all the way to the ground, but the vine couldn't stretch quite that far. It has partially broken. I don't dare touch it. It seems to me there may be enough intact stem for it to ripen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Its a nice big pumpkin and very early in the season. Even if it doesn't make it, there is still plenty of time for others to set and ripen.

Read more ...

so cute ...

What to do about a very cute baby rabbit that has taken up residence in my garden? Every morning when I open the blind and look out to my side yard garden - there he is. Cute as ever. A rabbit is a bit of a novelty here in suburbia. As I watch, he mostly eats weeds I have missed: grasses and clover. Those, oh and the dill, soy beans, and all the perennial trilobia (a pretty black-eyed Susan type of plant) that I grew from seed last winter. But so far, he's cuter than the damage he's doing.

I have plans though. I'm thinking of 12 inches of chicken wire around the garden. My guess is he will eat more as he gets bigger. But maybe I will only put chicken wire around the cold frame (I will definitely add chicken wire around this). The cold frame is in the last sunny section of my side yard.

I am getting more and more disappointed about how poorly things are growing in my shady side yard. The shading trees grow by the day. I'm now moving what I can out to my community plot now. Eggplants and peppers are moving as I pull out spent peas, and harvest onions and garlic. Maybe I'll just sow sweet clover as I move the plants out....

Have you ever heard of a gardener who liked having a rabbit in their garden?

Read more ...

no soy beans

This is what the rabbit did to my soybeans.

I love edamame, especially fresh from the garden. And I prefer a variety called Butterbeans. It has big pods and very good yields. I planted a patch earlier this year using seeds left over from 2 or 3 years ago. They did not spout (about 1 on 20 sprouted and the rabbit ate the few that did sprout). Maybe this is a seed that does not store well.

So I looked up online to find more Butterbeans. It seems they are out of stock everywhere. I found them at advertised one website and ordered two packages. But when they arrived they were a different variety (Envy - it has little pods). But I planted them anyway just before I left on vacation.

To make a short story long - the baby rabbit ate all the sprouts. Before leaving on vacation, I asked my husband to barricade the cold frame so the bunny couldn't get in. He reinforced the edges, adding lattice and plastic stapled to the wood frame. The problem was in securing it to the house. Well, the rabbit must have found a way in. Its too late now for a third try. No homegrown edamame this year.

Read more ...