Cooling Down

There was a mini cold snap in the evenings a few days ago that effectively ended production of warm season crops. I had only a handful of plants still in the ground at the garden site. A late Saturday or early Sunday temperature in the mid-30s wilted most of the peppers, tomato and potato plants. There was not much production on those plants anyway. I haven't had a ripe tomato in a week.

Two pepper plants still are going strong. They are called Garden Salsa. I have grown them the past three years from starts I buy at a roadside plant stand. They are a long, moderately thin, medium heat pepper. I can eat them fresh without too much bodily harm. I harvested a few red ones earlier this season, and now am waiting for a fairly decent crop of green ones.

The cold weather is over. It is sprinkling now and is supposed to rain for the next few days, which will warm up evening temperatures. It has been more than two months since there has been anything but a trace of rain. A mini drought. The mornings have been cool, but without much dew. So the moisture is welcome ... for now.

I delivered my last load of produce to the food bank yesterday. I am 15 pound shy of a quarter-ton. I have an apple tree in the backyard with more apples than I can eat, so I likely will deliver a bag of those to the food bank. It might be just enough to pass the 500-pound threshold.

Winding Down

It has been a good year. For gardening, that is. The other parts are questionable. Different does not equate to good or bad. Just different.

A veggie mix from mid-September harvest: Lemon and Straight-8
cucumbers, Early Girl and Nebraska Wedding tomatoes, Tropea onions,
Charentais melon, a small Howden and Rouge Vif d'Etemps pumpkins
and Garden Salsa, Carmen and Beaver Dam peppers.

I had a great harvest. Everything did well except my corn and watermelon, which were grown in the backyard with beds preyed upon by the big-A maple tree. I have written about that in the past. The solution, hopefully, will be to clear out the old soil, put in fabric to block the tree roots and amend the soil with good compost. I have completed one of three backyard raised beds, and seeded lettuce, radishes, onions and garlic last week. I'll check the soil in the spring to see whether the trees roots are prevalent. If not, I'll do the other two raised beds and expect better production in the backyard next year.

Production at the garden site was fabulous. I got bumper crops of everything, even tomatoes, which took a considerable hit from blossom end rot. I still have a lot green tomatoes, but day length is shortening and evenings are cooler, so I'm not expecting too many more ripe ones.

I harvested my last melons yesterday: two Charentais with four mature melons each. Those plants were staggered slightly from the main melon patch, which I finished harvesting two weeks ago.

I'm already envisioning my 2013 melon patch. It will have more plants and more varieties, but fewer plants of each variety, except Lambkin, which is far and away my favorite melon to date. I raised only four Lambkins this year from two plants. I still have three in the fridge. Lambkins are a hybrid of Piel de Sapo, or Christmas melon. As the name implies, they often are still around for the holidays because they are good keepers with refrigeration. The taste lingers long after the last morsel is consumed.

A melon menagerie. Clockwise from top, Prescott Fond Blanc,
Lambkin, Korean Star, Tigger and Charentais. Each melon
is average size for its variety. The Tigger is slightly
larger than a baseball.

Great Pumpkins

I delivered most of the pumpkins I grew this year to the food bank this week. I didn't track the total weight of the pumpkins, but the two deliveries combined, minus some poundage for a few other fruits and vegetables, was 137 pounds. A decent haul.

Pumpkins in many shapes and sizes. The flat ones in front are
Rouge vif d'Emtampes. The two little white ones are Lumina,
grown from 2004 seed that traveled across three states.
The gray ones, which are actually blue-gray but the sunlight
is too bright, are Jarrahdale. The one in back is a Howden.  

From left, Howden, Jarrahdale, Rouge vif d'Emtampes, Lumina.

I had a lot of success with pumpkins in 2012.

Some Decent Poundage

I delivered 64 pounds of produce to the food bank today. The majority of weight came from pumpkins, which I have started to part with. I harvested a bunch a few weeks back to cure and admire. Some of the full-size ones are quite heavy. Some of the food bank families have up to a dozen kids, so one big pumpkin, quartered and roasted, doesn't even feed them all. I plan to post some photos of my pumpkins, but I'm pre-occupied with melons right now.

I also had a large bag of pears taken from my backyard that I delivered to the food bank. I have a small pear tree and small apple tree. Last year, I got about two pears and three apples. I did a good job of pruning this winter, and now the trees are covered with bumper crops of each.

And, of course, everything is coming ripe at once: melons, pears, apples, tomatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, onions. It's a drag because six weeks ago, I was salivating over the notion of fresh melons and onions, and now I have so many, it's almost a burden. Most of the onions end up as topping for frozen pizza.

Four of a kind: melons clockwise from left, Tigger, Prescott Fond Blanc,
Korean Star and Charentais. The Tigger is much bigger than average,
the Korean Star is smaller than average. The larger Korean Stars
already have been harvested and eaten The Charentais is about
average size, this one being about the size of a large softball.

I ate part of my first Charentais melon today. Of all the orange-fleshed melon I've tried, I like Charentais the best. I shared my first Prescott Fond Blanc melon with my family over the weekend, another orange-fleshed, French heirloom (apparently, the French like melons). Although it was perfectly ripe and fragrant, the taste was so, so. Prescott is a great stealth melon, though. Even people who know vegetables were stumped. The same goes for Korean Star melons: A cucumber? A squash? Not worth your time thieves. I haven't lost a single melon this year.

My brother's cat, Diablo, visited my garden plots over the weekend.
He likes to go for walkies like a dog. He got overheated on this
near 90-degree day, so my brother gave him a shower under one
of the water spigots. Then he took a nap in the shade of a sunflower. 

Another Failure

My watermelon patch is a bust. I have written in the past about the painstakingly time I spent babying along watermelon starts from seed. Several died quickly upon being transplanted to the ground, but I finally got eight plants of two varieties to set fruit. Each plant set one melon. They grew for a while, then stopped. Stunted and immature. I'm yanking them in a day or two. 

The watermelon patch more than 70 days after transplanting
melon starts. Pretty lame.

A Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon about the size of a softball.
It should be the size of a volleyball.

A Golden Midget watermelon about the size of a softball. I don't
know what a mature size is for this variety. I was looking forward
to finding out this year. Depressed, I fed it to the raccoons.

The problem with the backyard raised beds is that the big-A maple tree nearby has sent out long roots that send smaller roots underneath the raised beds. The smaller roots climb up through the soil. Even after tilling the beds this spring, by now, the soil is a hard mat of tree roots. They suck out the moisture and nutrients. I fertilized the watermelons more than anything else this year, but to no avail. Alas. 

I dug out the soil in one bed this week and put down fabric that hopefully will limit the tree root system. I plan on growing some winter crops. If it works out, I will do the same to the other beds in the spring. If it doesn't work out, there is not much point growing vegetables in the raised beds. The results have been poor for most of the crops I have tried. My corn this year, for example ... forget about it.

Not Impressed

I harvested my first two Tigger melons today. As the monarchs say, "We are not amused."

I knew going in Tiggers would be small, the largest ones about the size of a baseball, the smallest about the size of a golf ball. What I didn't know is they have a large seed cavity relative to their size. Translation: There is not much edible melon by volume. 

What's the point? After cleaning out the seed cavity and cutting off
the rind, there is not much fruit left to eat on a ripe Tigger melon.

Three Tigger melons on one plant. My plants produced
four or five fruits each.

Tiggers in their unripe stage are a mottled green that turns orange on ripening. The ripe stage, however, is squishy-soft to the touch and doesn't seem to have much flavor despite a nice melon aroma. Translation: I'm not growing these things again.

I blew it this year by being cute with my Lambkin melons, using cross-pollinated seed instead of certified seed. I only had three starts. One of them died a slug-ridden death. The other two produced one large melon and two smaller ones. The big melon looks just like its ancestor, a Piel de Sapo, the largest melon I've grown to date. But the cross-pollination stripped out the hybridization that produces smaller melons in bumper quantities. If I had planted four or five regular Lambkin starts when I planted the other melons, I'm guessing I would have 12 to 15 excellent melons.

On the bright side, my Charentais plants are pumping out full-sized melons that are larger than a softball. From four plants I have 11 full-size melons nearing harvest. I snagged No. 12 today.

Spudnik

I started harvesting my potatoes last week. I grew one row of mixed potatoes at my garden plot. These weren't the only potatoes I grew this year because there is always room for another potato plant or two in other spots. I grew some in my backyard raised beds, but they were woefully unproductive.

I purchased registered potato seed in 2009 and have been saving seed from that stock ever since. The varieties I am harvesting this year are:

• Bintje: yellow skin/yellow flesh
• Desiree: pink skin/yellow flesh
• Rio Colorado: red skin/white flesh

A plate of egg-sized potatoes: Rio Colorado (red), Desiree (pink)
and Bintje (yellow).

I have had some problems with scab. It is more prevalent on individual plants than in general areas. In other words, one plant can have several scabbed over potatoes, whereas a plant right next to it will be fine. Even watering and slightly acidic soil will minimize scab. I usually water through the first hot spell or two, then stop watering completely. I did a lot of mulching of my potatoes this year, which helped minimize the number of potatoes "greened up" with solanine.

To Infinity and Beyond

The potato has come a long way since being turned into a crisp in New York in 1853. Innovative for its time, the Saratoga Chip was low technology compared with growing potatoes in space. During a 1995 mission, astronauts aboard the U.S. space shuttle Columbia grew the first vegetables in space. They used leaves from Norland potatoes to successfully grow tubers. Growing produce in a microgravity environment is a crucial step toward prolonged space travel because the process is capable of providing food and oxygen.

The Waiting is Over

I harvested my first melons today: three Korean Star. I ate one tonight. It reminded me of an episode from "The Odd Couple" where Oscar and Felix take a holiday in the tropics. Oscar quickly embraces the local custom of devouring a mango, face first in the fruit, juice flying everywhere, Felix shaking his head in disgust, saying, "Oh, Oscar!"

That's kind of the way it was for me. The rind on my Korean Star was so thin, I ate most of that, too.

Korean Star melons, about the size of a large mango.

I've been waiting 11 months for this. I thought about it all winter, prepared for it all spring, sweated over it all summer, and at last ... perfection never tasted so sweet.

I grew Korean Star melons once before in 2010, but produced only two mature melons. The seed packet said Kincho, but that variety is just 50 days to harvest. Here is how long it took this year to grow a Korean Star:

• May 7: Seeded melons in a flower pot tray.
• May 27: Transplanted seedlings into individual, 3-inch pots.
• June 28: Planted melon starts in the community garden.
• August 31: Harvested the first melon.

This plant produced three melons. I harvested the top one today.
I have four Korean Star plants and expect to harvest 10 or 11 fruit.

Remember what this plant looked like as a pup on July 6?

Rustic Tableau

The Delicata seed experiment is nearing an end. This is probably the most interesting part of my experience this season. I like the science of gardening. If I manage to grow something good to eat, that is a bonus.

The parent fruit looked like the oblong one in front.
The progeny were hybrids of various shapes and sizes.

As I noted before, the results of planting seed from a cross-pollinated source are unpredictable. Besides getting four different types of squash from one seed donor, each plant's production was different. The plants that grew Delicata squash were the least productive, even though that variety was the original seed source. A couple of the plants' production was negligible, while one plant that produced acorn-type squash yielded about 10 fruit on one plant. The oddball squash, which has green ribbing like Delicata but matured to a light orange skin, produced four large fruits and recently set a couple of new ones. For perspective in the photo, the Delicata squash is about 8 inches long. The dumpling squash are about the size of a baseball.

High Moon

I have written in the past about a raccoon and striped skunk that visit my backyard for food. In the past six weeks, I have greatly increased the amount of food I put out because I have seen a family of raccoons, up to five at one time, come for chow. I also suspected there might be more than one skunk, but could not verify it. About a month ago, a skunk and raccoon milled around foodland at the same time before the raccoon kind of chased off the skunk. I say kind of because when the raccoon exhibited some aggressive behavior, the skunk sort of shrugged and wandered off.

As the nights have become shorter, it is harder to see this activity. I stand on my back porch with binoculars. Even after dark, I can still see okay. Foodland is about 60 feet from my back porch. I put out sunflower seeds and dry cat food for the skunk, dry cat and dog food for the raccoon. Sometimes they get treats, such as melon or chopped up zucchini. Tomorrow will be leftover stew night.

Tonight was a grand spectacular. It was clear with a three-quarter moon. The wildlife viewing was superb. This is what I saw:

I got home about 8:45 p.m., still twilight, but getting dark fast. I could hear something rustling around in the bushes and knew the critters were about. I have gained a sixth sense about their presence: I know when they are there. The skunk has come by the past three or four nights at exactly the same time. The raccoon is not far behind.

I dumped a 16-ounce coffee can full of sunflower seeds and cat food for the skunk and a 16-ounce coffee can full of cat and dog food for the raccoon. Within five minutes the skunk arrived and began eating his pile of food. After a few minutes, something startled the skunk and it took off. I saw one of the neighbors' cats on my lawn. I chased off the cat, then another. There are several neighborhood cats who use and abuse my property. I love cats, I just don't like it when they go after the birds or chase off my skunk friend.

A few minutes later, the raccoon showed up and started eating the skunk's food instead of his own. Then the skunk returned. The skunk made a few aggressive lunges at the raccoon (who is a lot bigger), but the raccoon wouldn't leave. So the skunk decided to make peace, sidled up to the raccoon and began to eat. Raccoon and skunk, side by side, foodland chums.

The raccoon finally wandered over to his own pile of food and began to eat. The skunk eventually left. A few minutes later, the raccoon went back to eating the skunk's food, but this time with a companion: a smaller, obviously juvenile, raccoon. 

The two raccoons kept eating until the skunk returned again, this time with re-enforcements: another skunk. There was a short truce while all four of them ate together. When I say together, I mean shoulder to shoulder, right next to each other, like lions and buzzards working on the same wildebeest carcass.

One of the skunks started to do his aggressive lunging thing again and both raccoons darted off. I left the scene with the two skunks eating in tandem, heads down, tails up, white stripes illuminated by the moon.

Dans le Jardin

The spell of hot weather pushed along the winter squash. Most of it and the pumpkins can be harvested soon. There are two bush variety acorn squash that took a while to set, so they will be the last winter squash to ripen.

A fleet of Rouge vif d'Etampes pumpkins for Cinderella's night out.

A Prescott Fond Blanc melon looking very squash-like.

A Hot One

It has been hot all week, with temperatures pushing into the high 90s. The next couple of days are supposed to be the first consecutive 100-degree days since July 2009. That is a good indicator of how lousy the summer weather has been the past three years.

I have begun harvesting tomatoes, although it still will be a week or so before the plants ripen a lot of fruit. Regardless of the variety, all of the tomatoes at the garden site ripen around the same time. Everyone gets loaded down with tomatoes and can't give them away fast enough.

Production is a little sketchy this year. I've harvested quite a few cucumbers, and there might be a second, smaller harvest in the next few days, but I didn't get as many as I thought I would. The Straight 8 variety is especially stingy. 

I finished harvesting fava beans. There were only two plastic grocery sacks full of beans from nearly an entire row of plants. This is about the same yield as last year. I'm thinking of trying a different variety next year to see whether the crop yield will improve.

My bush beans are doing great. I grew a first-time variety this year called Black Valentine, an heirloom. They are moderately thin and long. They don't have the--not sure what other people call this--fuzzy skin on the outside of the pod, which seems prevalent on some varieties. The smoother skin seems to be make the fresh pod taste sweeter. I like munching on these while I gardening.

There is a bumper crop of winter squash this year. I have yet to take an inventory of what is on the vine, but I see additions every day. A few of the crossbred Delicata plants were slow to produce, but now are pumping it out. My Rouge Vif D' Etampes pumpkins have been good producers, too. This was another crossbred seeding, but unlike the Delicata offerings, there are no oddities so far.

Name that Fruit

I have written before about using seed from store-bought Delicata squash. The issue is that unless you grow homogeneous crops with hundreds of yards of separation between crops, you will get cross-pollination. That won't hurt the parent plant or its fruit, but the progeny of cross-pollinated fruit will be unpredictable. The old wives' tale is that the progeny fruit will be inferior to the parent fruit. I believe this is wrong. I used tainted Delicata seed last year and had success. It admittedly was unpredictable, as I got plants that produced dumpling squash or Delicata. But the flavor was undiminished in either variety.

I used the Delicata seed again this year and, so far, have impressive vegetative growth and a lot of fruit ripening on the vines of several plants. I again have Delicata and dumpling (which has some fruit as large as an acorn squash), but I also have one plant that is producing something quite odd. It looks like a watermelon, so it likely will get nicked. It will be interesting to see what the final result looks like and how it tastes.

What is it?

Dumpling squash.

Delicata squash.

Pickled

I am growing five varieties of cucumbers this year. Two in the food bank plots and three in my community garden plots. Then I mix and match. Boothby's Blonde are best eaten fresh. The skin is thin and they make a good snack while weeding, watering or harvesting. Lemon cucumbers, too. I seeded Boothby's and Lemon within a day or so of each other the first week of June. I already have harvested many Boothby's. I'm still waiting for a ripe Lemon.

I tried pickling cucumbers for the first time this year. In the past, I have pickled Boothby's and Carolina. Both have large seed cavities, which turns them to gel in a pickling jar. The pickling cucumbers I am growing this year are better, but several have grown too large, too quick, so they were food banked.

One quart of pickles and another one in the making.

I don't have a recipe for pickles, or anything else I preserve. The main thing is to use a lot less vinegar than what is suggested in most recipes. I dilute apple vinegar with 50 percent water. Add a little sea salt and onion powder, a couple of chopped garlic cloves and a teaspoon or so of dried dill. Okay, maybe that is a recipe, but I don't measure anything, so it turns out differently every time.

Sometimes I boil the water/vinegar before adding it to the cucumbers. It doesn't really matter because I store all of my preserves in the refrigerator. I reuse canning lids, so I can't trust dry storage for longevity. I just opened a jar of pickled peppers that has been in the refrigerator since September 2011. As of this writing, I have not suffered food poisoning. 

The pickled peppers are a variety called Garden Salsa, a long, thin, semi-hot pepper. I am not a fan of scorching-hot peppers, and this variety is just right on the Scoville scale for my taste. I would say it is close to jalapeno heat, but without the funky texture of thick-walled jalapenos. I have not been able to find Garden Salsa pepper seed via the Internet or other seed sources. I have purchased this variety as plant starts from the same roadside stand for the past three years. I have two Garden Salsa plants growing at the garden site that were planted July 18. I know that sounds late to be planting warm season crops. But peppers plants are just now starting to show some vigor.

It’s Been a While

The last few days broke the dreary spell of more than two weeks of overcast mornings and daytime temperatures below 80 F. Saturday, August 4, hit 100 F. The summer crops are soaking it in with a burst of productivity. In the old days, in California, 100 F was the average daily temperature for more than a month during summer. I sometimes fantasize about gardening in California. They start harvesting field-grown mixed melons in Southern California in May.

Pendulous yucca and ice plant, Lampranthus aurantiacus and
Yucca recurvifolia, growing in the California sun. The plants
were living in the Upper Sacramento River Valley as of June 2005.

Here in the gloomy Northwest, I began harvesting cucumbers from the food bank plots. The beets and peas are tapped.

Some Boothby's Blonde cucumbers harvested for the food bank.
They were direct seeded June 1 and harvested August 6.

Boothby's Blonde cucumber was the first vegetable I successfully grew from seed. It is an heirloom from Maine. I have grown it at the community garden site for three of the past four years and always get a large, early crop. I seeded some Straight 8 cucumbers the same day and in the same location as Boothby's Blonde. I have harvested one Straight 8 cucumber so far. That variety didn't germinate as well as Boothby's and its overall production will be less than half of its blond cousin.

A Howden pumpkin showing its first blush of orange. The good thing
about pumpkins ripening in August instead of October is they are
less likely to be stolen. Two were nicked last year.
This is the only fruit I got from a three-plant hill.

A Jarrahdale pumpkin on the vine. Named after the Western Australia
town, Jarrahdale pumpkins ripen to a grayish-blue.

A Prescott Fond Blanc melon about the size of a handball on August 4.
Four Prescott starts were transplanted to the garden site June 28.

First Crop

I dropped off the first food bank crop on July 24. Right now, it's beets, summer squash and peas. The peas were not as prolific as I had hoped. I think the heat wave that hit right when the peas started to flower might have affected their productivity. Normally, it is still cooler the first week or two of July. Well, the melons liked it, and that is all that matters. I already pulled my snow pea vines and seeded some Sugar Ann snap peas. I had good success with Sugar Ann in spring 2011. This is the first year I've tried for a fall crop of peas.

Chioggia and golden beets picked for the food bank.

 
I cut off the beet greens before delivery because food bank participants want vegetables that look like they came from market. Anything too exotic, such as eggplant, kale or yellow cucumbers, is not desirable. Perfectly globe-shaped Early Girl tomatoes get snatched up quickly, knobby heirloom tomatoes not so much.

"If I hear one more person say how much they love heirloom tomatoes, I’m going to punch them right in the face," says Annette Bening's character in "The Kids Are All Right." That's two good movies with the same name. "The Kids Are Alright" is a midnight movie classic about The Who. I wonder if Pete Townshend likes heirloom tomatoes?

For some hybridization of an heirloom standard, go here.

Fava Bean Chili

Shelled fava beans have an outer skin that should be removed when cooking fresh. To get rid of the outer skin, boil the beans for a minute or two to loosen the skin. Then it should be easy to pull off. It is time consuming to cook the beans this way, but the result is an extremely soft and buttery bean. For dried beans, it doesn't matter as much if you leave on the outer skin. Just cook them a long time. I used a crock-pot for the chili and the beans turned out fine.

Fava beans grown in 2011. Green pods dry on the bush to become
a purplish-black, with the dry beans being slightly less dusky.

Some fresh Bogatyr garlic to go in the chili. I planted cloves in a
backyard raised bed in October 2011 and harvested the bulbs the
second week of July. This hardneck garlic variety from Russia
produces small bulbs, but the taste is outstanding.

Almost as good as Nalley.

Going Live

After using my camera for 10 years, I now realize it has a video option. Guess I should have read the instruction manual more thoroughly.

These are some food bank rows in the community garden. The row of beets is ready to harvest. The vegetative growth on the pumpkins in back is quite impressive. Most of this stuff was direct-seeded the third week of May.

This is Hopi red-dye amaranth. These were volunteers. I like the burgundy color in contrast to all that green.
 

A Good Start

Harvest began this week at my community garden plots. Slow to start, but easily the potential to be my best harvest by far in the four years I have gardened there. Snow peas were the first to mature. Now they are nearly tapped. I ate most of them while I wandered around my plots. I get the munchies when I am out there.

Some of the goods from this week: two kinds of summer squash,
Chioggia and golden beets, and snow peas.

There are seven other gardeners who are growing plants I started. Mostly squash. It's the desert island vegetable at the community garden.

Catching Up

Progress is encouraging in my garden this year. The past week or so has been quite warm and the plants responded accordingly. I finally got watermelons established in one of my backyard raised beds after some problems with starts damping off within a day or two of planting. 

The lineup in the melon bed is now five Golden Midget and three Saskatchewan watermelons, and one charentais cantaloupe. I lost five Saskatchewan starts before my last three took hold. They are beginning to vine, so it should be clear sailing from here.

I planted my last melon start today at my plot in the community garden. It was a Tigger melon that is set in between four Korean Star melons. There was a volunteer sunflower growing in that spot, but it toppled over a few days ago. I staked the one side where it kept leaning, then it fell over on the other side. It is just as well. The sunflower established a massive root system that would have sucked out a lot of nutrients better consumed by melon vines.

I achieved 100 percent success with 19 mixed melon starts surviving transplanting to my garden plot. If you count the one Ambrosia melon vine growing with the cucumbers, I have 20 melons total in my garden plot. But I don't count it using the same criteria as the other 19 because I bought it at a variety store garden center. All of the other melons I started from seed. Plus, there were actually three Ambrosia melon starts in the 4-inch pot I bought. One damped off, the other I pulled to end its competition with No. 3. So if I count Ambrosia, I am no longer 100 percent, and I like to be perfect.

First Look

It was in the mid-80s today. The plants are loving it. Here is a first look at the community garden this year.

Dwarf grey peas in flower. They were direct seeded May 7.

A Korean Star melon start a week after planting.

A Howden pumpkin vine starting to prowl.

A row of fava beans in the food bank plots.
They were direct seeded May 18.

Sunset in the garden.

Tree Varmit

So I have explained the critter situation to some degree, but I neglected to explain the connectivity of it all.

There is scrub jay pair who dominate the backyard. Other visitors, including a flicker, submit to the will of the jay. When I first moved here, there were several flickers. They dissipated after I screened off an attic vent they had breached to pull out fiberglass insulation to build their nests.

To bring back the flickers, I buy prepackaged blocks of seed and other goop stuck together that I hang from a tree branch. (It is marketed as woodpecker food, anyway.)

The squirrel, who gets harassed by the jays, has decided it is easier to hang upside down and pick away at the flicker food block than getting a meal from a squirrel box that I put up specifically for him. He eats there occasionally, but it doesn't seem to be a big enough challenge.

A morning snack.

The food block is hanging below the squirrel's left.

You talkin' to me?
(I'll bet he doesn't act like that when the jay is around.)

Angry Bird

I have an ultra aggressive scrub jay who spends a lot of time on my deck railing because I put food out there. The food isn't all for him, but he eats most of it and chases away everything else.

In repose, contemplating world domination.

A frequent visitor who gets chased through the trees by the jay
when he tries to get something to eat.

Another frequent visitor. Click on the image to see a lager version.
The jay will buzz him while he eats bird seed off the ground,
striking him on the back with his beak.

A raccoon shows up right after dusk during most months, but when the days grow longer, he wanders around when it is still light. If I don't put seed on the ground, or other food (dog food, critter crunch, lasagna, fruit, soup, etc.) the raccoon will climb into a large bush in front of hanging bird feeders and swing from the branches to knock the seed to the ground. He breaks off branches and crushes the flowers below.

The seed and other food also feeds a colony of mourning doves and a striped skunk, who I have run into several times when I have taken out food after dark.

The End Begins

I planted the last wave of melons in my garden plot today: three charentais and five Tigger. This is the first year I am trying Tigger. The Tigger starts were a bit leggy due to poor light in their infancy, but a few of them had decent root mass that should set quickly.

A healthy Tigger melon start a day before planting.

The first two plantings of melons look great, especially the first wave, Prescott and Korean Star, both of which have set and produced new growth in just four days.

I wish I could say the same for the backyard raised beds. The original four Saskatchewan watermelons died and one of the five Golden Midget watermelons is dead. The four surviving Golden Midgets look healthy but lack vigor. I replaced one Saskatchewan with a new start. I have two more. Another hole was refilled with a Lambkin, which immediately got attacked by slugs. Plural because I picked two three-quarter-inch buggers off the poor bastard this morning. It's too bad because my other two Lambkin starts were planted June 29 in my garden plot and already have started to crawl.

My garden, if you consider the raised beds, plots and food bank, is planted for 2012. There will be some inevitable changes to the lineups, which are updated in the Garden Schematics tab above.

The food bank plots have matched my original expectations the best. None of the first plantings have changed. I'm going to have a lot of beets, green beans, fava beans, zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins and cucumbers. The only weak spots are in the shadow of two volunteer sunflowers: one dead tomato plant and minus-six beets. The sunflowers will be bloomed out in a couple of weeks, so they will come down and the dead spots can be filled with something else. I have a couple of things in the works, but success is more of a thirsty man's mirage than a sane man's reality.

Nearly Done

I planted half of my mix melon starts yesterday and today at my community garden plot. It has been overcast, drizzly and humid the past couple of days, with more of the same forecast for the next day or two before warmer, dryer weather arrives. Hopefully, the melons will have a few days of mild weather to establish themselves, then take off when it warms up.

I am trying five varieties of melons this year:

• Prescott Fond Blanc (planted 6/28/12)
• Korean Star (planted 6/28/12)
• Lambkin (planted 6/29/12)
• Charentais
• Tigger

The Lambkins are an experiment this year. I saved seed from last year and generated some starts from the seed this year. Lambkin is already a hybrid, and last year's plants were grown in an open pollinated environment, so who knows what they crossbred with. 

Progeny of hybrids are not supposed to do well, or at least not produce fruit as flavorful as the parent plant. I think that is an old wives tale. I grew squash last year from seed cultivated from store-bought Delicata squash. Seed from a single fruit produced both Delicata and dumpling squash plants. The fruit from those plants tasted fine to me. That experience converted me from a squash ignorer to a squash liker.

The conversion to squash lover is still pending ... or not.

Then There Were Seven

I lost two of my watermelons today. Too hot too soon. The plants only got about five hours of full sun, but it was enough to torch them. So nine becomes seven. That's the breaks of growing your own. They were both Saskatchewan. I'm not sure what I'm going to replace them with. I have a few leftover watermelon starts, but they are not very robust. I have a good lineup of mixed melons ready for planting over the next few days, so I might just drop of couple of those in the kill zone.

I bought a Piel de Sapo melon at the grocery store tonight. They labeled it as a Santa Claus melon, even though common vernacular is Christmas melon. I grow the Lambkin variety. It was only 69 cents a pound.

Below is a photo taken today of the first sunflower at the community garden where I garden. Not just the first one in my plots, but the first anywhere at the site. It's like bringing in the first bale of cotton. Makes me proud. But it came at a cost, just like the first bale of cotton in "Places in the Heart." The sunflower has been sucking nutrients out of the ground, so an Early Girl tomato I planted behind it is quickly going the way of the dodo ... or Saskatchewan watermelons in my backyard.

The half-moon is on high.

Backyard Raised Beds

Besides growing produce at a community garden, I also grow food in three raised beds in my backyard. A schematic for my 2012 raised beds is below. Click on the image for a larger version. The beds are aligned vertically north to south. The schematic and photo are viewed from opposite ends.

The radishes already have been harvested. The spinach was an heirloom variety from which I got about one salad before it bolted. More potatoes and onions filled the radish and spinach holes.The giant red mustard is bolting right now before reaching maturity. That is too bad. It adds quite a zing to salads.

Giant red mustard that overwintered this year in my backyard.
It bolted in May and was pulled to make room for the corn.

The garlic is Bogatyr and an unknown variety of softneck garlic. If it ever stops raining, the garlic bulbs will dry out and I can harvest them. Probably not until mid-July at earliest. The onions in the middle bed are a globe onion mix. The onions in the west bed are Red Long of Tropea.

Onions grown in my backyard in 2011, including
the torpedo shaped Red Long of Tropea.

I have had to seed and reseed the corn three times. Started too early. I get too excited when there is a warm spring day. It happens so infrequently that it forces me to take leave of common sense. Several more weeks of dreary, damp, dark weather bring me back to reality.

The east plot will be for watermelons. I am starting two varieties from seed: Saskatchewan and Golden Midget. Last year, I was unsuccessful growing watermelons in the middle raised bed. There is a big-A maple tree in front of the west bed that starts blocking the sun by about 3 p.m. The sun doesn't make it over the roof of the house until 10 a.m. So for the middle and west beds, full sun is four or five hours at best. The east plot gets more sun in the afternoon, so hopefully there will be better production this year. I did not build the raised beds or plant the trees in the yard. If I were going to build raised beds, I would not plant any trees in front of them, let alone a maple.

These are the nine watermelon starts I will plant in the east raised bed.
The four in front are Saskatchewan. Golden Midget are in the back.

 

Updated After Planting

 

The deed is done.