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.

Planting Time is Nigh

I hope to plant my watermelon starts in one of my backyard raised beds tomorrow. I had intended to plant on June 22, but the the weather went from high sun and 80 F on June 21 to rain and cool weather for the next couple of days. Nighttime temperatures dropped below 50 F. The last thing a watermelon wants is to start life in soggy, cold ground. It dried out this afternoon.

Saskatchewan watermelon seedlings. The long spindly stems are the
result of starting seeds without a grow light. Despite leaving them
in front of a south-facing window with plenty of afternoon light,
they ended up looking like this. The photo was taken May 20,
the day I transplanted them to pots. They were seeded April 26.

Mixed melon starts on June 22, the day I was going to start planting.
The Saskatchewan watermelons can be seen in the middle back of
the photo. The more impressive-looking starts at right are
Prescott Fond Blanc and Korean Star melons.

Melons are the primary reason I do vegetable gardening. I grow a lot of other stuff, but I could care less about most of it. I eat a lot of cucumbers, pickled peas and beans. Most of the other produce I grow, I give away or donate to the food bank.

I am growing mixed melons again at my plot in a local community garden. Those will be planted later this week. I am growing watermelons in my backyard because there is too much theft at the community garden. Read my "Meloncholy Tale" by clicking on its tab above for the logic behind this reasoning.

Most thieves know what a watermelon looks like. Not so much with some of the melon varieties I grow. To a would-be thief, Lambkin could be a squash or unripe melon. I am growing Prescott Fond Blanc melons for the first time this year. This French heirloom is the ultimate stealth melon because it has an ugly warty exterior that looks like a diseased pumpkin trying to ripen. The flesh is salmon-colored. The taste is a pending experience.

Food Bank Plots

I tend three food bank plots at the community garden where I garden. My 2012 food bank plots are shown in the schematic below. Click on the image to see a larger version. The eastern most plot has only two rows. The beet starts were donated by a local nursery. The beans, potatoes, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers were all started from seed through direct seeding at the plot. The tomatoes were purchased as transplants. The sunflowers are volunteers.

Striped cucumber beetles arrived in force on June 16. There was nothing the evening of June 15, but by mid-afternoon on June 17, my pumpkins (seeded in late May) were covered with them. I dusted with diatomaceous earth, a desiccant. The infestation abated, but there are signs every day of beetle activity.

The berry patch in the eastern most row is made up of mixed strawberries collected from various locations at the garden and transplanted at the end of the 2011 growing season. The raspberries are a golden variety that were donated in 2009 by a gardener who planted them along a perimeter fence. A Himalayan blackberry eventually took over that area along the fence, not to mention grass and weeds, so I salvaged the raspberries and planted them in a garden plot. I ate a few ripe ones today.

A Victory Garden

I garden at a community garden called the Forest Grove Victory Garden. It was developed in 2009 by community members and has about 150 plots available to the public that are 250 square feet each. I rent three plots and tend another three plots for the food bank.

My three plots for 2012 are shown as a schematic below. The middle plot has the mixed melons and cucumbers (two rows). Click on the image to see a larger version. Everything has been planted this year except the melons. The weather is not cooperating. 

The plot with horizontal rows (western most) was my original plot. I added two more by the end of the first year. I think vertical rows work better in terms of warming the soil because the plots face north and south vertically. However, my west plot always produces well even with the horizontal arrangement. I tend to grow the same thing in the same place in the west plot every year. Only the varieties change. The other two plots change a lot, especially because it is important to rotate potatoes.

I had a lot of success growing pumpkins in 2011, so I'm growing quite a few again this year. The difference is they are in the back of plots so they have more room to roam.

Howden and Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkins from 2011.

A Rouge Vif d’Etampes on the vine before it ripens.

Some other stuff from 2011, including Lambkin melons,
Delicata squash, lemon cucumbers and Marconi peppers.

Melons in the Mist

The rainy eastern rim of Oregon’s Coast Range is not ideal melon-producing habitat. Growing melons here requires a lot of care and maintenance. Patience and luck are important, too. I have grown mixed melons at a community garden since 2009.

I grew two types of melons from seed the first year: Lambkin and Galia. Lambkin is an All-America Selections winner from 2009. It is a Piel de Sapo variety, or Christmas melon, with origins in Spain. Piel de Sapo translates to “toad skin,” which describes the rough, mottled and slightly ribbed skin on these small, oval-shaped melons. Lambkin flesh is white with a thin rind. 

Two Lambkin melons on the vine. Leaves have suffered 
damage from powdery mildew after a light August rain.

Fresh Lambkin melon.

Galia melons look like a muskmelon on the outside, but have light green flesh instead of salmon-colored flesh. Galia melons were developed in Israel by crossing honeydew and muskmelons.

Two Galia melons right after harvest.

Galia flesh is about the same color as a honeydew.

The first year I covered a raised row with black plastic and cut holes in the plastic where I direct-seeded into the ground the first week of June. Germination was about 50 percent and I culled seedlings to one per hole. I ended up with three Lambkin plants and one Galia. I also had a yellow-flesh watermelon that I started as a transplant from a local nursery. Read more about that episode by clicking on my “Meloncholy Tale” tab above.

Since 2010, I have started seed at home and brought transplants to the garden site. I don’t bother with black plastic anymore. I add soil amendment both at the beginning and end of each growing season. I wait until the warm weather arrives to plant, usually not until the end of June, which is barely enough time to produce ripe fruit.

The 2010 growing season was one of the worst on record in Oregon. My plants produced only a couple of decent charentais melons, maybe one or two Lambkins and one ripe Korean melon.

An unseasonably late heat wave in 2011 resulted in a zero-hour recovery for the growing season. My plants produced a good crop of Lambkins, which was the only melon I grew that year.