Season Cooling off With Very Little Summer Crops to Harvest

The weather here has been getting cooler over the past couple of weeks and those hot humid days are probably over for this year.  I don’t expect to get much more summer crops this year except for some beans, cherry tomatoes, steakhouse tomatoes, peppers, and maybe decent sized eggplants.  What I have in melons is it for this year and now is the time to start picking them off the vines.

At the moment I have picked one crimson sweet watermelon and two honeydew melons from their vines this past week.  None of the other melons were ripe yet and have not fallen off the vine which is an indication that they are ripe enough to be eaten.

Although weather is cooler I am still seeing flowers on my eggplants and one of them actually is producing a few vegetables on the plant.  I am not certain how big they will get with the lack of sunlight and warm weather, but I am happy that I could get a few more from this season.  As long as a frost doesn’t occur for some time I could get a couple of decent sized eggplants.

Peppers and cucumbers are also still producing flowers, but I think that they are pretty much done for the year.  I think the last cucumbers are on the vines right now and are probably ripe enough to be harvested.  Peppers are done producing flowers and a couple of them have fruit on them that I will have to pick either today or sometime this week.

 I will soon have to cover my strawberries for the winter, but I am going to wait a little bit and put straw on top of them most likely in October.  I will also have to cover my rhubarb this season since it is the first winter for these plants.  I probably could pick some of the stems, but I want to wait until next season in order to prevent from picking too many stems this year and possibly harming the plant.  Plus rhubarb needs at least one cold winter to produce tasty stems for cooking

Ending the Garden Season on a High Note

Although it is not the end of the season and I would say that it will not end until the real cold weather arrives I wanted to get a good last harvest from my Roma tomatoes.  I had plenty of them on the plants that I was just waiting for them to ripen fully.  Today I think I picked the most I have ever in just one day.

It just happened that many of them were ripe on the same day.  Since most of them grew at the same time it makes sense that they would also ripen at a similar time.  I did leave some of them on the plant because they were just not quite ready and some of them still had green tomatoes on them as well.

Only a couple were continuing to produce tomatoes, but for the most part production of tomatoes is pretty much over for all the types of tomatoes that I grew this season.  The rest of them will be picked at a later date sometime in the near future.  There was 70 pounds worth of Roma tomatoes which will be turned into thick red sauce.

On a side not some cantaloupes were picked this week.  This makes two types of fruits that were picked this week.  This is usually the time when I start to pick my melons and watermelons are always last to be harvested.  Just four more cantaloupes to enjoy for as long as possible until other melons are ready to be picked.









 I also have one honeydew plant which is the only one to survive during the cooler month of May and it has one fruit on it that is hopefully going to ripen this season.  I hope that it ripens soon before the cool weather harms the vine and it won’t be able to fully ripen.  It has finished growing so right now it is working on the ripening phase of the fruit.

Time to Make the First Cut in My Honeydew Melon

I thought that today would be a good time to start cutting up my honeydew melon since it has been in the fridge for a few days.  I do not like warm fruit and I like to leave them in the fridge for at least a day in order to make it cold enough for consumption.  I wouldn't say all fruits need to be cold to eat, but at least melons for the most part.

I would say it looks very juicy from this picture and it definitely was juicy when I took a slice from it.  I was glad that I planted these types of melons and I hope to grow them again next year to hopefully get them a little bit bigger.







A few more fruits and vegetables were harvested today.  Some of them include peppers, tomatoes, and even one more cantaloupe.  I already finished the first cantaloupe that I picked a few days ago and now another one was ripe enough to bring inside.  I would say a couple of days and it will be ready to cut open and eat just like my honeydew melon.

Cherry tomatoes and Roma tomatoes were on my mind today because I had a few Roma tomatoes from another harvest and wanted enough to make some tomato sauce.  I found about 12 more and they were a pretty good size.  I also had some more cherry tomatoes that I needed to pick as well.  I also picked a few more peppers that I thought were ready enough to eat.

Honeydew Melon for the First Time

This was the first year that I tried honeydew melons and it was a pretty good year for them.  Even though only one out of four plants survived I still think that it was a good year with the first honeydew melon that I picked today.  I have been growing melons for a long time and mainly cantaloupe and watermelons.  Since these are all melons they will pretty much need the same care as one another.  Adding another melon was just a simple step and nothing too major.

 It is a good size, but I am more concerned about the taste of the melon.  As long as it is sweet and juicy like a melon should taste, then I will be happy with this years melon harvest.

Four more peppers added to the list today.  There were only four to pick this afternoon and I didn't want to pick any that were not ready for consumption.  I like to leave them out until they have grown to their maximum size and then harvest them.  Today I found a couple that were beginning to go from green to red.  This is when I know I left them on the plant too long.

The End of July Means Fall Seed Planting Begins

This is just an optional way of extending the growing season by planting fall seeds that can withstand the cool weather or sometimes require the cool weather to produce great tasting leaves.  Since time is always against me as a gardener I like to grow as much as I can in the allotted time that I have.  This is why I like to have a fall harvest and this is usually when I begin planting the seeds.

It is also a great way to grow different things for the current garden season.  This year I am planning on growing cabbage, kale, and broccoli.  These plants thrive in the colder weather and can also withstand some hot weather in case there are some hotter than normal days during September to October.  I planted eight of each plant into small pots today.

On a side note some of my cherry tomatoes have been turning red.  I noticed this yesterday when I was going through my plants and I noticed that some of my cherries were red.  They were not quite ripe to eat, but today I decided to pick one of them a give it a taste.  It was quite good for a first and I should be picking many more of them in the next couple of weeks at the most.  I hope it will be sooner, but these are just the early bloomers that like to ripen really fast and early.

I finally have my first honeydew melon of the season growing on one of the vines.  I only have two plants, but since I have never grown these before I think that this would be plenty for now.  I could always grow more next year, but for now I wanted to focus on the honeydew and my watermelons for this season.

Speaking of my watermelons I think that they are doing quite well right now.  I hope that they get as big as possible because it won't be the same eating a small watermelon.  I am not looking to grow a 200 lb watermelon, but I think a twenty to thirty pound melon would be perfect.  Take a look at a couple of them below.

I have a total of five watermelons growing at the moment and these are just two examples of how they are growing.  The others are pretty much the same in size and shape, but I wonder which one of these melons will be the biggest of the season.  Make sure to keep reading this blog to find out how big these watermelons can get this year.

Using Fluorescent Lights for More Indoor Planting

Now that my spinach plants no longer need fluorescent lights to continue growing I can now use this light for different seeds.  I do the same thing every and once my spinach are just about ready to stay outside all night I can use these lights for the bulk of my garden.

Although the bulk of the garden is in the form of tomato plants I like to think that the ones I planted today are the second part of my garden.  These will make up the second half of the garden not including corn, beans, and carrots. 

The one thing I want to mention before I discuss the various seeds I planted this evening is the one new plant I added this season.  I normally grow the same thing each year, but I always like to add something new to the garden.  This year I am going with planting another melon.  Honeydew is going to be the one fruit I will be focusing on this season.  I though it would be a good addition because you can make a great fruit salad using watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew.

Honeydew seeds on the left and cantaloupe seeds on the right.

I didn't think I needed to add too many seeds for my honeydew, but I thought my cantaloupe might need an extra one.  This is just in case some of them may not sprout.  Hopefully they will all sprout because there is always room to remove some of them.  This is only in case more than one of them grow in each pot.

Peppers, cucumbers, and eggplant are other seeds that I planted today.  They are quite simple and since they are a little bit older than my melon seeds I needed to plant several seeds in each pot.  Four for cucumbers, five for eggplants, and six for peppers.  I have found that older peppers do not sprout well and that is the big reason for adding many into one single container.

Getting the Right Seeds for the Year

The first step in setting up my garden is getting the right seeds.  Most of the time I just use the same thing every year except for one that I choose to have something different.  This year I decided on doing another melon along with watermelons and cantaloupe.  I am now going to add honeydew to the list and will plant them in the same row as my other melons.  Making a fruit salad with these three melons is something that I can do with them once they are all ripe.  I could also just eat them like I normally would.

Leafy Plants

These year I will have many leafy plants in the garden because I will continue to grow spinach, both romaine and iceberg lettuce, and now for the fall I will be growing kale.  This is one of the plants that I have grown before with much success, but did not get to grow them last season.  Adding this leaf plant to the fall crop will reduce the amount of broccoli and cabbage that I can grow, but will give my fall garden a little bit more variety.

Again with Celery

At the same time I will be growing celery again like I did a couple of years ago.  That harvest was not my best and I want to make sure that I get a much better harvest and I thought getting some celery seeds would be a good addition to the garden.  I don't plan on growing that much, but at least half of a row should suffice for this season.  I will see how much room I have when I begin planting them.

One More Flower

I like to grow flowers in order to attract all the best insects that I can for help in reducing the populations of many pests.  This year I am going to add cornflowers to the arsenal of other flowers that I will be planting.  I will not be removing any other flowers and instead will just add cornflowers in random spots in the garden.  The more variety of flowers you have the better that the good insects will continue to travel to your garden.  This is my hope every season.