Melon Slings & Protection from Varmits
shekanahh
14 years ago
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
14 years agoshekanahh
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Heirloom and Hybrid Melons
Comments (44)It's been weeks since I've posted. I planted some melons in August. The weather has been very unpredictable the last two months here in Southern Cal. We've had mainly cooler than average temps (5-10 degrees) except for one week of 90 deg. weather. Not surprisingly, the Butterscotch Sweetie performed like champs. There were about 3 melons on each of 8 plants, all of them sweet though smaller than those planted in June and harvested early August. Most of the volunteer Galias have blossoms but they probably won't bear now. The 4 Haogen Melon plants suffered through the foggy evenings and cool days, succumbling to blights. But I managed to get 5 regular sized melons, the rest were too small and I pulled the plants out. Unfortunately, the largest, a 2.5 lb melon was attacked by the ground squirrels. I have one Jenny Lind plant and it produced one one-pound melon, but the squirrels got to it, too. The other two JL melons were too small to be worth anything before the plant died. The good news is that those three melons, if planted in early August in the future, will probably succeed. They were still selling Ambrosia, Galia and Haogens at the Hollywood Farmer's market through early October. Anyway, I am so glad the Butterscotch melons can produce even when others struggle this first week of November....See MoreDo you plant your melons on hills?
Comments (7)Christie, interesting comments on that link. The lady who called holes hills reminded me of a piece I read long ago about dry country gardening. The idea was to dig out a below level garden to keep hot dry winds off the young plants and to catch rain water. I believe New Mexico was mentioned...it had to be sandy soil or you would have a lake when the rains come. When we first cleared the trees and brush off this old homestead garden area after 40 years of abandonment, we had to shallow till and rake the 4 inches of soil into French Intensive style raised beds. No sides...just pulled the soil up into planting areas about 3 feet wide leaving a walking path in between. Once the tree/brush roots had decomposed after 3 - 4 years of tilling with a big Troybilt horse, we were able to get back to "normal". After reading that link, I would say normal is any bodies guess. ;O)...See MoreCan I help melons ripen before frost?
Comments (10)A lot depends on what our weather does. Most years my watermelons last a bit more deeply into fall than muskmelons, true cantaloupes and other miscellaneous melons do. Once the temperatures drop substantially and the daylength is a littler shorter every day, the melons slow down in growth and can take a longer time to mature. However, they will eventually mature. I am about to take out my muskmelon plants and watermelon plants in the front garden so I can clean up that bed, but I'm going to let the watermelon plants out back go on for as long as they can. Last year we harvested a couple dozen watermelons in October and November, and the flavor was fine but the melons were, for the most part, smaller than fruit on the same vines had been back in the summer months. I just leave the plants alone and let them do their thing. I don't cover them up on cold nights, I don't pinch off blossoms and I don't tip-prune. Our average last frost date is in mid-November, but sometimes the first frost hits in latest September and sometimes not until mid-December, so I'd rather let the plants go on producing for as long as Mother Nature will allow. I missed a couple of melons last year when I harvested the last of them on the day before the first freeze was expected to occur that night, and I didn't find them until 3 or 4 weeks after the first freeze. By the time I found the melons buried under a lot of dead, brown foliage, they'd been exposed to overnight lows as low as 18 degrees and I was surprised they weren't rotting. One wasn't any good. It was smaller and likely was a long way from maturing when the freeze hit. The other one was large and probably was completely mature when we froze, and its very thick rind protected the flesh inside (which surprised me). It was very tasty, but not quite as tasty as summer melons from the same plant that matured in much hotter weather. So, even if your melon has time to reach its mature size and to ripen fully on the vine, the flavor might not be as good as you remember because it matured under cooler conditions. You could try to keep the melons warmer by putting a low tunnel (PVC or EMT hoops covered with clear plastic) over them, but be aware that if you do that, you have to watch them closely because the greenhouse effect can roast the plants to death, and a lack of air flow can encourage fungal diseases. If I was going to to that, I'd probably pull the plastic back off the hoops during the day and pull it back over the hoops in late afternoon to hold in the heat during the night. And, I'd make the hoops go a foot or two above the top of the trellis. If your clear plastic is too close to the plants even in cool autumn weather, they plants can get too hot and be damaged or even killed. My garden does pay for itself most years. I generally can about 600 pints of food and fill up 2 or 3 deep freezes, and then have onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes and winter squash in dry storage for the winter months. However, it also costs more money to process and store more food, so the longer the garden is producing heavily, the more money it costs us in terms of processing and storing the excess part of the harvest that we cannot eat fresh. It has taken me many years, though, to arrive at the point where I feel like the garden does pay for itself......and, even if it didn't, I'd have a big garden anyway. I don't garden just as a way to save money in the food budget. I do it because I enjoy it (and I have about 100 other reasons) and I like knowing how our food was grown (as naturally as possible) and I enjoy sharing the produce with our friends and family. Even though I put up a lot of the harvest to eat later on, my favorite thing to do is to eat fresh from the garden in season. You know, when asparagus is in season, I'd never go to the store and buy vast quantities of it so we could eat it once or twice a day for weeks on end, but when it is coming from our own garden, we do eat it once or twice a day for weeks on end. It is the same thing with everything else---something like melons could be on the menu once or twice a week if we didn't have a garden. With a garden? They can be on the menu daily at the height of the season, and often I have enough to share. I often feed the chickens a melon of their own in very hot weather, and sometimes slice one up for the deer as well. A large and highly productive garden lets you do things with food that you wouldn't do if you were paying grocery store prices for that food. Tim wouldn't be happy with me if I went to the grocery store and bought a melon for the chickens!...See MoreVeggie Grow List for 2010
Comments (68)Ezzirah, I don't grow raspberries because they don't like the heat here, but I would think that any high-quality potting mix would do. You want something that is light and fluffy and which drains well. Avoid the ones that are labeled as 'moisture-control' because they can hold too much moisture and kill plants. I grow blackberries which are very heat tolerant in the ground in clay soil that's been well amended with a lot of composted cow manure and they do great in that. However, if you're growing raspberries in containers, you can't use native soil because it packs down and strangles the roots. Containers need a well-drained soil-less mix. I usually mix up my own container mix from a few basic ingredients and I can 'make' it drain more quickly or more slowly depending on what I use and on which proportions I use. A soilless mix is generally composed of some combination of peat moss or compost, vermiculite or perlite or expanded shale and pine bark fines and often has other ingredients added to provide nutrition or enhanced ability to drain well. The next time you're in a store that sells bagged potting soil and garden soil, look at the bags. Usually the name-brand ones that are labeled container soil or potting soil will be a soil-less mix. The ones labeled Garden Soil or Vegetable Soil likely contain some topsoil or dirt and should be used only in raised beds or added to your native soil. The poor quality mixes often contain a lot of black clay and should be avoided at all costs. For seed-starting, it is best to use a sterile seed-starting mix which is very light and fluffy and has only tiny particles so there's no particles large enough to keep seeds from sprouting. When handling ALL potting soils or seed-starting mixes or soil-less mixes, ALWAYS wear gloves. People who handle these mixes with their bare hands can contract some very serious illnesses from them, including a fungal infection that can get into your body and become systemic and chronic. It is your garden. Plant what you want and plant as much of it as your want and just enjoy the whole process. If you burn out, that's OK, because everything you do still will be a great learning experience and will leave you better prepared for the next garden. If you have lost your marbles, you'll eventually find them again....and most likely you'll find them in the garden under a large and vigorously growing squash plant. Here's my feeling about 'planting too much' 'going overboard' and 'losing your marbles': if those three things are the worst thing you ever do, you'll likely survive and have a wonderful life. Look at the other obsessions some people have.....spending tons of money to attend athletic events or take trips to exotic locales or go on guided hunting or fishing trips or maintaining their own deer lease or bass boat....or buying a new pair of shoes every couple of weeks so you have shoes that match every outfit or whatever..... If you enjoy gardening, then throw yourself into it wholeheartedly and love every minute of it. For me (and y'all probably can tell this already), gardening is not my hobby--it is my lifestyle. It is great exercise, it beautifies your property, it gives you FRESH garden produce, fruit, herbs and cut flowers and it feeds your soul. I can't see a downside to gardening. I find that I hit the 'burn out' stage several times during the gardening year and when that happens, I force myself to 'take a day off' and not step foot in the garden for a day or two. It is surprising how quickly I miss playing in the dirt when I take that day off. Dawn...See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
14 years agogldno1
14 years agoshekanahh
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14 years agogldno1
14 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7