Melon mystery and More

 The strangest thing happened in my garden. I planted a bunch of watermelons. At least that's what the seed packet said. It was supposed to yield round fruit that weighed up to 25 pounds. So I planted all these identical looking seedlings and let them run rampant up tomato cages and across expanses of the garden. Imagine my surprise, now that these melons are ripening, to discover that I have a bumper crop of canteloupes and what I believe are mammoth honeydews but not one single watermelon! There must have been a big mix up in the seed packing plant.

Having never grown watermelons before, I had thought that the strange rough markings I saw on the surface of the melon would disappear as the fruit matured and took on a more "watermelon-y" appearance. Wrong! Those strange markings turned out to be the distinctive texture of a cantaloupe. DUH! Oh well, At least they're turning out to be beautiful cantaloupes as you can see by the photo of a cut melon. I have a "honeydew" ripening that weighs nine and a half pounds. I've got fingers crossed that it's as good as the rest of my crop.

On another front, I was away in Las Vegas for a week attending a family wedding and left my son to tend the garden in my absence. After about five or six days he decided to peek inside the cucumber bush to see if anything was ready for picking. At right you can see his one day harvest. When I first bought the cucumber plant, its tag said the mature fruit would be about six inches long. The tape measure along the bottom of the photo tells you these cukes are a lot bigger than six inches and these aren't even the largest ones that have been picked. I picked one that measured 11 inches long and another that was 9 inches long. The largest was nearly as thick as my arm. The one in the picture at left was as long as my forearm and they are all sugar sweet. The tomatoes pictured are only a fraction of what's still on the vine and the size of what's to come is enormous. I've been eating fresh cukes and tomatoes on a daily basis and loving every bite. I only fertilize when I first plant so I can't say that I'm doing anything particularly special to get such outstanding results. I'm beginning to think my earthworms are pooping steroids into the garden.

Next up: green peppers and sweet aji peppers. I can taste them already.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva