May 21 2011

Here we are getting towards the end of May. The weather seems to think it is more like the end of June. We haven't had much rain and it has been HOT!! A couple of things didn't work out too well this year. My cucumbers for one were a real disappointment compared to last year. I had 6 vines last year that produced a total of around 300 cucumbers. This year I planted 4 vines. They began growing and then sent out numerous blooms just like they had in seasons past. As soon as several of them were pollinated the plants quit sending out male flowers. The vines were loaded with female flowers but no males to pollinate them so they just shriveled up.

The blackberries began forming and then started to ripen but never fully ripened. They just shriveled up and fell off. This is the first year of growing them so I will do some reading and see what I come up with. We got a few zucchini off the plants and then had a big outbreak of pickle worms. I get them every year but this year was terrible. By the time I got them under control we lost most of the zucchini fruit and then the vines died.

The cantaloupe I bought from Lowe's and planted in the container never made any melons. It had lots of male and female flowers and I watched the bees pollinate them but no fruit ever formed. However we did eat a store bought cantaloupe and threw the leftovers in the compost pile. Well wouldn't ya know a volunteer sprouted and...

 

Maybe to grow cantaloupe I should just throw the seeds in the compost pile. Also popping out of the compost pile is a butternut squash we had a few months ago.

The strawberries are filling in their bed nicely so hopefully this fall they will produce a nice crop.

Once I got the bird netting around the Atkinson tomatoes they started getting ripe before getting eaten. The Mocking birds aren't too happy though. They climb on the netting and try to get to the tomatoes. Too bad for them.

Sweet potatoes are coming along fine.

There are 6 watermelons forming on the vines with more blooms opening up. Hopefully we won't get a real heavy rain while they are ripening up. That has happened before and it causes the melons to split. They won't ripen after they split.

The bell peppers are really taking off. I would like to let some turn red but the birds might be a problem again. One was turning red and then I found a pecked area on the red part. The birds go for the color. I hope I don't have to build cages around the peppers.

The eggplants too are doing fabulous. I picked a few the other day and am going to fry them up today to go along with some pressure cooked black beans and wild caught sockeye salmon for dinner.

The rest of the day I am going to try to clean up the dead plants and get some mulch on the empty beds. I will probably add a little organic fertilizer and rock dust to the soil before covering it with the mulch so the microbes can begin breaking it down over the summer to make it available for the fall planting season.

That's all for now.