The smallest ripe cantaloupe you have ever seen...

Just like the butternut and acorn squash vines, the cantaloupe vines were looking rather strained.  I thought they could go longer, but when I felt the fruit, the undersides felt kind of soft.   I figured it was time to pick them and see if they were ripe.   

  

They were:

However, once seeded, the amount of flesh inside was probably no more than 4 tablespoons.  Four delicious , juicy, ripe tablespoons.   Emily and I split our bounty and then back into the compost they went.

Not sure what I could have done to make them bigger.  More nutrients?  More sun? (most likely), planting them earlier in the season?  Who knows.  It was fun experiment though.

I wrote about this earlier, but here is a picture of our two harvested acorn squash.  Unlike the cantaloupe, they are the same size as the ones you see at the store.

Lastly, here is what is left of the onions.   Working our way though them slowly.   I have not bought an onion or garlic in over 3 months at this point. That is pretty cool!

Goodbye cucumbers

The main task this weekend was pulling up the cucumbers. All of the new cucumbers were deformed and yellowish.   I harvested the last three or four good ones, and put an end to the sorry looking vines.

I also finally tied the asparagus to the shed, as you can see from the picture below.  I'd been meaning to do this for months so that I could walk along the back of the rows once again, but I kept putting it off.

I also harvested the two mature acorn squash plants and composted all of the dead butternut and acorn squash vines.   

Last Wednesday I attempted to germinate some spinach seeds inside, wrapped in a damp paper towel inside of a plastic bag.   About 10 or the 40 seeds germinated, so late sunday night I sowed them into the garden, where the cucumbers used to be.  Now that I write this, I wonder if I should have added some nitrogen fertilizer (Bone meal or fish emulsion) to the soil before sowing. I guess I still can... The plan is to wait another day or two to see if any other seeds germinated.  I will keep moving them outside as they germinate. I found this was one of the few methods that actually worked this spring for the spinach.  

Closeup of some green tomatoes growing outside the cage.  

Colorful stuff

Last week I made this Chinese noodle dish that Emily and I really like, and I decided to throw in some fresh veggies.  About 95 of what comes out of our garden is green, so it was really fun to cook with such colorful veggies.   

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Just another update

In addition to the pictures below, I wanted to note that we have tons of Anaheims and Poblanos on the plants right now.  They they are still flowering and more tiny peppers are coming.    One thing to note is that the Jalapeno plant is super small this year when compared to past years.  It is only a foot tall, not 3 or 4.  I think this is because it was shaded out by the greens and the other pepper plants when it was young, but who knows.    The good news is that I don't even need it.  It has been fun eating the new pepper plants.

Sweet potato patch.  Will harvest this patch right around the first frost. 

I have been meaning to take some pictures of the cover crops.  This is winter rye and hairy vetch inter-planted.  The patch in front was sowed 8 days ago, and the patch in the back was sowed 4 days ago. 

You can barely see it, but the straight blades are the rye, and the blades that have little cross leaves on them are the vetch

The collards and watercress that was sowed 9 days ago.

The chard and spinach that was sowed 9 days ago.  No sign of the spinach yet

Butternut Squash harvest

The time has come, and to be honest, it was a little underwhelming.  The picture below is 3/4 of my butternut squash harvest.  One more squash is still on the vine, but it is still a bit too green.   The vines have mostly died back.  I'm not sure if this is normal, or if they died back early because of some disease.  I do know that eventually they die back, I just thought it would happen in another month or so.

Luckily, there is some green foliage right around where the last squash is, so hopefully that helps it mature for a few more weeks.

The cantaloupe and acorn squash plants look like they are not that far behind.  There are two mature acorn squashes, and the two cantaloupes never made it bigger than softball size.

So that makes 4 butternut squashes, 2 acorn squash (maybe a third, but I doubt it will have enough time), and two tiny little cantaloupes.  Good thing I didn't go crazy and built a root cellar.  We could eat these guys in the course of 1 month.  

As for the butternut squash, the general wisdom online is that now I need to let them cure (inside is fine) for about two weeks.   After that, they are best stored between 40-50f, but i have read that it they should be good at most indoor temps for 3-6 months.   

The mystery melon will forever remain a mystery

While getting the collard bed ready for the cover crops, I sent my hoe right through the mystery melon vine.  Funny how quickly and accidentally I can end the lifespan of a plant that was growing slowly for months.  I took the melon inside, and Emily and I cut it open to see what it was.   We could finally get to solve the mystery.         

As I cut down I was sure I would be cutting into a watermelon, but as you can see from the picture below, I was wrong!  Green on the outside, white flesh, and orange core.  It kind of tasted like a cross between an  cantaloupe and a cucumber.    We decided that an unripe cantaloupe is the most likely answer from our limited knowledge of such things, but neither one of us would put any money on it.   I sure wish I could have let this thing grow more.

Anyway, the whole thing was pretty fun.  Into the composter he went.  

RIP Collards and Kale

So this past Sunday I finally couldn't bear to watch the destruction occurring in my collard patch any longer.   The harlequin bugs won, and I lost.   I even bought a highly rated insecticide soap a few weeks ago, but I never even took it out of the plastic wrap. The bugs just continued to multiply and suck the juice out of all of the leaves.  By the time I pulled the plants up, the leaves were brittle and had yellow pock marks all over them.

After pulling the plants up, I saw between 50-100 of the bugs crawling on the ground.  As I watched them, I remembered reading that a vacuum can be a great tool when it comes to cleaning bugs off of leaves, or in general.   Sure enough, I took out the wet/dry vac and was able to suck up dozens of the bugs as they fled to the sweet potato leaves and the asparagus.  As I was doing it, I realized that maybe I should have tried this when I first noticed the bugs.   I might have been able to nip the whole infestation in the bud.

And that brings me to the Kale. As a recap, about a month ago I cut almost all of the leaves off the kale plants, harvesting most of it, because I was losing the battle to white flies.   I left the stems, and a tiny bit of new growth at the heart of the plant.  I then sprayed the plants with a neem oil / garlic concentrate combo once a week for two weeks.  The results:  The white flies disappeared -- but the new grown never really rebounded.  New leaves definitely grew, but they were brown around the edges.  The looked "burnt" and unhealthy.  Like the collards, this past weekend I just admitted defeat and pulled them up.

In the empty collard patch, I sowed more hairy vetch, rye, and peas.  It is kind of cool watching the garden slowly turn from summer to fall, one patch at a time.   I love the idea of putting in the cover crops.  It really makes it feel more of a transition than an "end" to the growing season.

I have spinach, collards, chard, and watercress in seed trays that I am trying to germinate for the fall/winter.  Hopefully the temperature has cooled down enough to get a good germination.   Otherwise, I'll have to try it inside (which is also quite warm), or just wait another month.    If everything goes well, I will transplant the greens in with the cover crops and hopefully keep the garden going for a few more months.

Mid-week Update

Just wanted to show a picture of the basil that was transplanted a few weeks ago. It has really started to take off.

 Three of the Dahlias are blooming now, and another three have buds and will be ready within the next two weeks.

The mystery vine in the back is starting to look more and more like a watermelon.

Cover crops and getting ready for fall

I'm still not sure what I'm going to plant where for the fall, but in the meantime, I sowed some hair vetch and winter rye in the old bean patch and under the pepper plants.  I'm curious to see how long it takes it to come up, and how much of it germinates.  I had a few last basil seedlings in the starter, so I planted 3 or 4 in the bean patch and another 3 or 4 in with the peppers.    Not something I thought about doing ahead of time, I could not find a reason why extra basil would be a bad idea.  

I covered both plantings of rye grass with a thin layer of leafgrow leaf mulch.  Hopefully the leafgrow is not too strong for the seeds.

Speaking of transplants, I also finally transplanted the marigolds and the 2 brussels sprout seedlings that made it this far into bigger pots.  My plan is to grow the marigolds in the bigger pots until the Tithonia is ready to be pulled.   It would be nice if the marigolds are ready in time so we could have some good fall color in the front.

Behind the pots is a volunteer butternut squash plant that I tied to the downspout to see if I could get it to climb all the way up.