More on Melons

I needed to bookend my melon-growing season with a final post for 2013. So here it is. I grew six varieties of mixed melons this year at my community garden plot: Lambkin, Uzbek Sweetness, Charentais, Vert Grimpant, Golden Crispy and Ananas D'Amerique a Chair Verte.

From left, Lambkin, Vert Grimpant and Uzbek. Each one is about
average size, with the V.G. about the size of a large softball.

I got 16 full-size Vert Grimpant off five plants. This was the first year I grew Vert Grimpant, which is French for "green climbing." This would be a good variety to grow on a trestle if you wanted to make more work for yourself. The flesh is green and quite aromatic. The flavor is sweet, especially if you let the melon cure a while after harvest. This variety slips from the vine when ready to harvest. I will grow this variety again, but limit myself to a couple of plants. 

Vert Grimpant in the flesh.

I harvested a bunch of Lambkin melons off several plants. It seems the Lambkin is either boom or bust. Most of the plants had two or three full-size melons, while one totally healthy plant produced only one small melon. These are great storage melons in the the refrigerator. I harvested all of my melons by the third week of September, but didn't eat the last Lambkin until November. I will grow this variety again. Best melon ever.

Two football size Lambkin melons on the vine just before harvest.
The melons do not slip, but the dark green skin becomes
mottled with yellow when ripe.

Uzbek was another first-timer this year. This was a difficult variety to judge ripeness. Some of the melons yellowed as they ripened, while others stayed mostly green. The amount of netting varied considerably, too. The plants were not very productive, but the specimens that were produced were quite exquisite. The flavor is lightly sweet, but can be bland if harvested too early. The flesh turns woody if harvested too late. Definitely a labor-intensive variety, but worth the time.

Uzbek flesh is nearly white.

I grew some Ananas D'Amerique a Chair Verte melons because I got a free packet seeds from the seed house where I purchased the Uzbek and Vert Grimpant seeds. Thank you, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. This was an unpredictable variety in terms of production. A normal melon, I think, is heavily netted and about the size of a small volleyball, but I had a few that were significantly smaller and one that was larger without much netting. By the time I harvested this variety, I was experiencing melon burn out, so I'm an unreliable source as to its quality. The flesh seemed similar to Vert Grimpant both in color and flavor, but I had eaten a lot of Vert Grimpant melons by then and my taste buds might have been on auto pilot. Like Uzbek, I will have to grow this variety again to better understand and appreciate it. 

Two not of a kind. These Ananas D'Amerique a Chair Verte melons
came from different plants. The one on the right is probably the
normal size. The one on the left is obviously larger, with less netting.
It turned yellow instead of tan. On the right side, there are signs of rot,
which meant harvest it or lose it. This one ended up as raccoon food.

I had only a couple decent plant starts for Charentais and didn't get any full size melons. Part of the problem was I allowed several Hopi red-dye amaranth plants to grow from volunteers near where I planted some of the melons and they eventually blocked out a lot of sun. This also affected production of some of the other varieties, but I had such heavy production from the plants that grew in full sun that it didn't matter.

There was a nice row of Golden Crispy melon plants that suffered a massive infestation of spotted cucumber beetle. The odd thing was the insects didn't bother the other melon varieties growing close by. I finally eradicated the beetles, but production seemed to suffer, with only a few quality melons growing to the size and shape of a large pear. The flavor was wanting. I will not grow this variety again, unless it is to drive pests away from other varieties.

Epilogue: I attempted to grow watermelons in a backyard raised bed, but failed again for the second straight year. The big-A maple tree sent tentacle roots into the raised bed, busting through the fibrous material I used to line the bottom of the bed. Next year, if I accept the mission, I will try heavyweight black plastic at the bottom, which means digging out a yard of soil again, putting in the plastic and refilling the hole. Fun times.

Lots of Variety

I have had a great growing season. The weather has been warm and dry for many weeks. It started showering this week, but that is the first significant rain since May. I have harvested a lot of produce. Much of it went to the food bank. 

I tried leeks for the first time this year, growing about 30 from store-bought starts. I still have about half of them in the ground. The longer they grow, the wider they become at the base. Until the end of the season, I am mostly down to tomatoes and melons. I harvested my first melons this week, but most of them still need about a week to ripen. The rain isn't helping.

A variety of stuff I harvested from my community garden plots in July,
clockwise from bottom, sweet onions, zucchini (green and yellow),
beets, carrots, and leeks.

A load of produce today for the food bank: yellow zucchini,
acorn squash, dumpling squash, yellow and red potatoes, 
and Early Girl tomatoes.

Some peppers I harvested this week from my backyard: Holy Mole,
Jimmy Nardello, Carmen, Black Hungarian and Italian roaster.

Backyard Production

I grew quite a lot of early crops in my backyard raised beds this year. Two of the three had cooler season crops, such as garlic, onions, lettuce, carrots and peas. The third bed is planted with corn and melons. With the melons growing in my backyard and my rented plots, I have more than 30 melons plants this year. It will be quite a haul if the weather stays hot.

A backyard bed with lettuce, onions, and garlic.

I grew several kinds of lettuce. The most interesting one is the
red-speckled Forellenschluss, an Austrian heirloom
that is similar to romaine.

A backyard bed with carrots, bunching
onions, peppers, leeks (seedlings under
the mesh), and peas.

I grew Sugar Ann snap peas and this variety, a Dutch bush variety called
Desiree Dwarf Blauwschokkers. It has small, violet-colored snow-pea
pods. It is worthy as a novelty, but the flavor is rather bland. 

Unfortunately, my experiment in trying to inhibit the big-A maple tree from sending roots into my raised beds failed. The roots grew right through the porous black material I placde in the bottom of the beds. Two of the beds were done this spring. They will remain productive because it will take a while for the tree roots to take over. However, there is a huge root mass in the third bed, which had the lettuce and onions. I pulled the last of the lettuce this week because it bolted. I pulled the garlic and most of the onions. There are maybe two dozen onions left. They will be stunted from having all the nutrients sucked out by the tree roots.

I'm not looking forward to redoing the three beds again. They will have to be dug out and fitted with black plastic. If that doesn't work, there is not much point in using the backyard beds. There is about a yard of soil in each, and it is quite a chore to dig it out, put in plastic and refill. Although, having a successful melon crop in the backyard, like I will have this year, is worth the effort.

Melon Season Begins

I'm growing six varieties of mixed melons and one variety of watermelon in 2013. Some varieties I started from seed and transplanted, others I direct seeded. I transplanted 14 melons starts on June 23, an overcast but warm day. It rained that night and showered for the next three days, so the plants were cool and well-established when the heatwave hit yesterday. Temperatures for the next two or three days are expected in the low 90s. The plants will lap up the hot weather and be well on their vining way within two weeks of planting.

Two views of a tray of melon starts ready for planting June 23.
They were seeded  May 9 and seedlings were transplanted to
individual pots June 2-3. The two right-side columns are Lambkin.
The two left-side columns are Uzbek Sweetness.

A Lambkin start planted June 23. Lambkin
was an All-America Selections winner in 2009.

2013 melons

• Lambkin (hybrid of Spanish Piel de Sapo, grown before)
• Uzbek Sweetness (heirloom, first time, supposedly grown in Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan)
• Charentais (French heirloom, grown before)
• Vert Grimpant (French heirloom, first time)
• Golden Crispy (heirloom, first time, grew similar variety in 2012)
• Ananas D'Amerique a Chair Verte (heirloom, first time, supposedly grown by Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century)
• Cream of Saskatchewan (heirloom watermelon with white flesh, crop failure in 2012)

Good Eats

The raccoon has been coming by before dusk the past few nights. She is more tolerant of my presence. I rattle the dog/cat food around in a can, and I think it is like her dinner bell. She is coming around by herself, so the yearlings must have moved on. The red berries are from a nandina bush that offers some shelter for dining.

Oh, ’Possum

A new critter has discovered food funland: a opossum. I saw it for the first time two nights ago on a three-quarter moonlit night. The opossum had free reign of the dog food for a couple of minutes before a raccoon came and claimed head of the table. 

The opossum left, then came back to nibble at the edges of the food while the raccoon continued to eat. The two were within a couple of feet of each other.

My main raccoon I believe is a female. She travels with three yearling kits. There were four kits in the summer, but one might have been a male who left to forge his own path in life, or one might have been killed. There is a two-lane highway on the far side of the greenway behind my house that is death alley for raccoons.

The female always comes first, then is joined a few minutes later by the other three. I have not seen the kits in the past few days. The nights are warmer and mating season is near, so I'm wondering whether the family is splitting up to live as adults. Female raccoons will share territory, but will not likely travel in pairs. Raccoons are social enough to share a dedicated food source, such as food funland.

This might be the last I see of the family together. There was a tender moment a week ago between the female and her kits. She ate her dinner then left. She came back with the other three behind her. She moved to the far side of the food and watched as the kits, seemingly on their best behavior, ate their dinner. The last supper, perhaps. 

It is good to see a opossum. When I was growing up, opossums were quite ubiquitous in the Northwest, and often were seen as roadkill. In recent years, I have seen very few roadkill opossums. This is my first opossum sighting in a few years. 

I'm looking forward to a bright moon and the raccoon, opossum, and skunk sharing a meal.

Outside Aviary

Master of the house. A pair of jays are never far from the action.
I put food out, turn my head, and one or both of them are there.
Behind the jay is a nandina, a monotypic evergreen that bears
nonedible red berries in the winter.

Another regular who hasn't been around a lot this winter.
He ignores the squirrel feeder in favor of the $6 a pop
woodpecker blocks.

I put bird seed out every day, and the more I put out, the more birds I get. I didn't have any starlings for a while, then I hung out a couple of suet cakes. Now I have murmurations of starlings every day. Many murmurations. It bugs me a little that they are chowing down on the food meant for native birds, but I guess they are hungry, too.

I put about 2 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds and white millet on the ground every day, and fill a couple of hanging feeders with a mix of millet, thistle seed, and wild bird seed.

I have 10 to 12 pairs of mourning doves and two pairs of collared doves that are regulars to the backyard. They are not foul weather friends like the starlings. The mourning doves have been hanging around for two years. The collared doves have been here since this past summer. It originally was one pair, but they must have told their friends about food funland. Collared doves are a Eurasian species that was introduced to the Bahamas in the 1970s. They migrated to Florida and, eventually, across North America. They made it to Oregon by 1988. They are quite a bit bigger than mourning doves and likely compete for habitat and food. 

Below is a list of birds I have identified in my backyard in the past day:

• Mourning dove
• Collared dove
• Scrub jay
• Northern Flicker
• Robin
• Starling
• Bushtit
• American goldfinch
• Dark-eyed junco
• White-breasted nuthatch
• Black-capped chickadee
• Rufous-sided towhee
• Red-winged blackbird
• Brewer's blackbird
• Golden-crowned sparrow
• White-crowned sparrow

The bushtit is the American variety. It is the only bushtit in the Western Hemisphere, and the only member of the genus Psaltriparus. They like the suet cakes.

A group of bushtits appeared a week or so ago and have stayed around
during the recent cold snap. They like the hanging food, especially
the suet cakes. This photo looks like I added some fill flash, but it is
just the light from the setting sun hitting it at the right angle. 

A cloud covered the sun a minute or two after this shot, and when
it finally cleared, the sun was already below the horizon.

The flickers are the red-shafted variety. They hang out here in the winter, then summer somewhere else. I saw the rufous-sided towhee for the first time yesterday. It is odd because I was just thinking a few days ago how I wished a towhee would pay a visit. The juncos are the "Oregon" variety. The males have black heads. They are an unusual color variation for the species, but they are so ubiquitous in this region, it isn't a big deal. 

Life is good around here if you are a male red-winged blackbird. There are as many as 20-30 females that visit at one time, but I've seen only one or two adult males. There are some juvenile males mixed with the females, but they look similar unless they flash some wing. The blackbirds are quite aggressive, arriving in large clusters and outcompeting even the starlings. The doves fidget around the edge of the seed until the blackbirds leave. The doves spend a lot of time chasing each other away from the seed, only to have the blackbirds come and gobble it up. The blackbirds started to visit when the weather turned cold and likely will leave when it warms up again.

Two female Brewer's blackbirds. A cluster of Brewer's arrived today.

Three female red-winged blackbirds. Soft focus through a window,
but shows a good comparison with the other species of blackbird.

I have a green space behind my backyard. A creek runs behind that. When the creek overflows, it often leaves standing water in the flood plain. Mallard ducks and Canada geese will puddle in it. When the field is dry, northern harriers and red-tailed hawks do regular flybys. I had a juvenile red-tail sitting in my big-A maple tree a few weeks ago during a windstorm.

The one bird I have never seen in my backyard or even in close proximity is a crow. There is plenty of crow habitat nearby, but for some reason, they stay away.

Update

Some other birds I've identified in my backyard this winter:

• House finch (yellow headband, chin, and throat)
• House sparrow
• Downy woodpecker (male and female)