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Video Wednesday
Knowing the right time to harvest melons can be a challenge, so here’s a video to help you out with that.
More Melon Mania
What can I say? Sometimes alliteration just gets the best of me.
So I was out wandering around the garden this morning, when I noticed that our ‘Honey Bun’ cantaloupe was looking decidedly riper than it had just 2 days ago. After another loop around the garden, I went closer to see how the stem looked – if it was ready to “slip” or not. To my surprise, I found the melon already completely detached from the vine! Sure enough, the stem had pulled off completely. That makes this melon literally “falling off the vine ripe.” Since a melon doesn’t take kindly to sitting out in the hot sun, boiling from the inside out, it has now been added to the menu for Lunch in the Garden tomorrow, along with the Roasted Tomatillo Salsa. Yum! (By the way, I think Lunch in the Garden will actually be Lunch in the Ingle Room tomorrow. Even I have limits of what I’ll tolerate!)
Here’s the stem end of the melon. You can see that there is a well defined dish where the stem was attached, showing that it really was ripe and not just pulled off early. The spot in the center is actually a little cavity into the melon itself, which is rather strange. I don’t know if that is an abnormality of this particular variety or something else weird happening. It definitely isn’t normal.
From the inside, you can see that it is thoroughly ripe. The rind is narrow, which is good. The seed cavity is a little bit bigger than ideal, but not terrible. Of course, what really counts is the flavor. I would call it good, but not great. It doesn’t lack flavor, but it isn’t as sweet as I think a really good melon should be. It is entirely possible that we have been watering too much, preventing the development of the best possible flavor.
Watermelon & Tomato Salad
I love watermelon, but I am usually content to eat it all by itself. It really seems unnecessary to adulterate it in any way. However, the past couple years, I’ve seen lots of recipes come along that use watermelon as an ingredient. Savory salads, grilled, sorbets, sautes, etc. Well, I happened to buy a huge (25+ pound) yellow-fleshed watermelon while I was traveling in Oklahoma last week, and then I had to figure out how to fit it into our refrigerator. Since I had more watermelon than we could possibly eat, I moved onto some of these alternative preparations.
This is the result of my foray into savory watermelon salads. You are looking at cubed yellow watermelon, cubed purple tomato, minced basil, and feta cheese. In my opinion, the feta is unnecessary, but my husband is a fan of it. This was all tossed with simple vinaigrette of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Yum! What a delicious, cool, summery salad. It was definitely better the first day, but still tasty today. I think I would have liked it just as well with only the watermelon and the vinaigrette.
Next up in the watermelon adventure…Watermelon Salsa!
Friday PhotoEssay + Family of 4 Harvest
The garden changed quite a bit while I was gone, and not all of it for the better. Yikes, it’s been hot!
Our big, 100 gallon smart pot is a little slower than other things in the garden, I think largely because it is in a slightly shadier spot. However, the cucumber has finally taken off! It grew up the side of the tomato cage and is now working its way up the chain that was hanging above it. Crazy cucumber!
The peppers aren’t looking quite as nice as I might wish. They are a little bit pale in color, which is probably a nitrogen deficiency. They aren’t really producing either, which is probably partly due to the lack of nutrients. I gave them some fertilizer, so they should be looking better by next week.
The smart pot isn’t drying out much differently than any of our other containers, but it maybe isn’t a very good test since it is in a slightly shaded spot.
This is the ‘Honey Bun’ cantaloupe that was such a cute baby just a week ago. You can see the netting starting to develop on the end, but it is still very green!
The ‘Cherry Brandy’ Rudbeckia in one of the cutting flower gardens has burst into bloom. It is almost too pretty to cut!
Surprise! The Bells of Ireland are blooming! Actually, it’s quite impressive that they are blooming, given that they much prefer cooler spring weather. I was fully expecting them to either croak or hang out and wait until the weather was cooler before blooming.
There is no getting around the fact that these are just weird flowers, though.
The top cucumber is one of the ‘Diva’ Cucumbers from the Family of 4 Garden. The other two are from the Asian Garden. The ‘Diva’ is actually about 6+” long, which helps you appreciate how huge the other cucumbers are!
Here’s the Family of 4 Garden Harvest for the week:
1/4 bunch of carrots @ $2.00/bunch = $0.50
2 cucumbers @ $0.75/each = $1.50
1 lb. non-bell peppers @ $2.50/lb = $$2.50
1/4 lb tomatoes @ $2.00/lb = $0.50
1 bunch Swiss Chard @ $2.99/bunch = $2.99
Weekly Total = $7.99
Yearly Total = $138.97
More Signs of Summer
Despite all the rain, the warm temperatures have been keeping all the plants growing quickly. Things are still moving forward! One plant that I’m a little bit surprised by is the ‘Honey Bun’ Cantaloupe. Remember, it is supposed to be a more compact, bush type cantaloupe that is good for small gardens. It is a few weeks old and not very big yet. It looks like it might be just starting to think about vining a little bit, but surprise! It already has flowers on it!
Now, a close inspection of the plant showed me that while there are lots and lots of flowers, they are all male flowers right now. This means that we can’t expect to see any melon for awhile yet, because the plant needs both male and female flowers to produce fruit. The same goes for the zucchini and other squash and melon plants. Just because you are seeing lots and lots of flowers doesn’t mean that you should expect a squash or melon for every flower. Only the female flowers produce. (You can tell the difference because female flowers usually have a swollen area behind the flower – a tiny baby squash or melon.) Most vines produce male flowers first, then eventually balance out to both male and female flowers.
Interestingly, our gold zucchini actually produced a female flower first, but I’m expecting that zucchini to start rotting here in the next couple of days because there were no male flowers to pollinate it. If I’d been on my game, I would have picked it on the day it bloomed for a gourmet treat!
