May 2009 Archives

How does one accidentally plant watermelons?  Well, let me tell you.

So, to my admittedly inexperienced eyes, the seed-leaves of squash/gourd/melons look pretty similar.  I was at a farmers' market, looking at a table full of squash/gourd seedlings.  I wanted to buy zucchini.  I was in a hurry, I was already loaded down with plants, and the day was getting increasingly hotter. The pack of seedlings labeled "Black Diamond" sounded like a lovely zucchini variety.

Except Black Diamond isn't a zucchini variety.  I was mystified about what kind of plant it was.  Internet searches for "black diamond" were incredibly unhelpful ("black diamond" appears to be a popular business name).  "Black Diamond zucchini" didn't turn up anything, neither did "Black Diamond eggplant." Hmm.

I took a picture of one of the mystery plants.  While looking at the picture, I kept thinking "Those leaves look familiar." (Now the plant has its "adult" leaves.)  I wracked my memory banks, and an answer appeared.  "No!" I thought, "I hope it's not a watermelon!"

Well, it is. 

Here's a nice picture of a Black Diamond watermelon on its vine.  Gurney's sells the seeds.  Their description of it is pretty alarming.  "25-30 foot circle"?!? Eek.

I have four of these plants.  o.O

I don't even really like watermelon!  But since I now have watermelon plants, I am intrigued by the idea of watermelon molds.  Man, a Totoro-shaped watermelon - how awesome would that be! :D  

I could see the squash blossom from the kitchen window this morning.  So I trooped out into the yard and took a picture of it.

While I was out there, I also took a picture of the buds on one of the Rose Gold potatoes:

I noticed that several of the Rose Gold plants are growing blooms now.

Things are starting to bloom. ^_^

I'm most excited about the blooms emerging on one of the Rose Gold potato plants.  Yay!  I guess they're making up for lost time.  I thought they would never sprout, but here they are, getting ready to bloom. Cool.

The squash plants look like they might be forming buds.  I'm not sure.  They have these little fuzzy green nodules clustered around the stem, so I'm assuming those are buds rather than new leaves.  But they could well be new leaves.

The Nikko Blue hydrangea is about to explode into bloom.  The "moonshine" yarrow is also beginning to bloom. 

In the herb bed with the yarrow is my poor little bloody dock plant that is being nommed out of existence by something or other. I think that if the culprit isn't mammalian, it must be a swarm of locusts.  Whole leaves are gone, only the red stems remain. *sigh*  Bugs are definitely chewing on some of the other herbs in that bed.  One of the basils looks like Swiss cheese, and so does the valerian.  Or is it the vervain?  Eh, I'm too tired from weeding now to go back outside and look. :P

The tomatoes are growing along slowly.  I think they're about 6" tall now.  Despite my impatience, I suppose it's a good thing that they're taking so long since I don't have their trellis up yet! 

I also planted some seeds today: Cosmic Purple carrots and Rossa di Milano onions.  Now I have to remember to water the onions every day, because apparently that's what they require.  High maintenance little dudes. 

The last of the seedlings - the tulsi, coleus, and balloonflower - are outside on the front porch to meet their fate.  I'm at a loss for what to do with them, so I figured I'd apply some tough love.  They are all "leggy,"   but if they survive the acclimation process, I'll go ahead and plant them. 

My poor tomatoes are still tiny.  Like less than six inches tall tiny.   It's the middle of May!  I'm starting to wonder if they're even ever going to get their stuff together. *sigh*  Maybe I should squirt them with some worm poop.  That'll fix 'em. 

According to my gardening journal from last year, the tomatoes had blossoms on them in mid June.  *chews on fingernails*  I really hope the tomato plants produce some actual tomatoes, because my copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving arrived today, and I really want to can some tomatoes!  (And I've been daydreaming about fresh caprese, too.)

Everything else is coming along slowly, I guess.  Even the potatoes have even stopped their explosive growth - they've looked pretty much the same for the last few days.

The beans are growing.  About half of them have sprouted so far.  Maybe the others will come along soon.

I wonder if the leaves of the squash plant are a little too pale.  Hmm.

I also wonder if the mustard will ever get to be an edible size.  It's nearly summer!  There were little slugs hanging out on the mustard plants today.  Do slugs eat mustard greens? 

I still haven't transplanted the shiso. That's definitely on the to-do list.  Transplanting the shiso and planting the onions, that's what's next.  After some weeding, of course.

Today I managed to take pictures of my plants before it got dark enough to mess up all of my photos.  It rained all day, and no gardening happened, just photography.

It's the carrots!

And the chard.

The very scrawny Lollipop tomato

I'm trying to fill a sizable flower bed in front of my house with perennials.  The perennials that returned from last year are rosemary, monarda (bee balm), dicentra (bleeding heart), and bloody dock. The echinacea didn't come back this year. This flowerbed is right under my unguttered front porch, so maybe the ground is too wet for echinacea.  That's my theory. 

Today I finally got around to planting most of the perennials that I bought at the farmers' markets a few weeks ago.  I really am terrible about planting plants once I get them - I'm not sure what my problem is!

Today I added these perennials:

• Gray lavender
• Bloody Dock (total of 2 now)
• Valerian
• Yarrow (red)
• Blue Vervain
• Bleeding Heart (total of 2 now)
• Yarrow ("Moonshine")

I peppered in a few annuals:

• Sweet Basil
• Red Basil
• Another kind of basil
• 3 Chinese Five Color Peppers
• 2 Nasturtiums

Some of the plants in the front flower bed:


Some of the herbs I bought are likely to spread all over the place, so I put them all into this pot:

After all of that, I headed to the veggie garden to do some weeding.  The weather was perfect, and I could smell the fragrance of honeysuckle on the breeze.  I wish all of my time weeding could be like it was today!


So the carrots, chard, and shungiku are now (mostly) weed-free.   Next up is to get the weeds out of the onion row and try planting the onions again.  This time I'll keep them watered.

A few more beans sprouted - I think the new ones might actually be the snapped beans. Yay!  Something has been chewing on the bean leaves.  I'm not sure if it's a bug or a mammal. Hmm ...

Today I mowed down the bamboo sprouts and the rest of the yard.

I intended to finally plant the hostas that I bought at the farmers' market a few weeks ago, but when I lugged to hostas to the site, I didn't like the way they looked.  *sigh*  So I only planted one of the three hostas - the only one that I thought looked harmonious with the hydrangeas.  I believe the variety is "Northern Exposure." I wanted golden hostas that would compliment the green hydrangeas.  It turns out that the other two hostas and the hydrangeas are about the same color. Ironically, the one I like with the hydrangeas is not a golden variety - it's a bluish green with white edges.  I bought it because I needed a third one, and there weren't any more gold ones. I think the gold-ish hostas may have lost some of their golden color because they got too much sun on the front porch.  I put them in place, still in their pots, and I'll see what I think about actually planting them in a few weeks. 

Speaking of the hydrangeas - the flowers are starting to form.  On two of them.  I didn't see any on the littlest one.

Let's see, what else did I notice today ...

I have four bean sprouts.  I think they're the True Red Cranberry variety.  I'm honestly most excited about the snapped beans - I hope they sprout soon!

The other plants are hanging on - no more fatalities.  Some of the pepper sprouts are still teeny-tiny - I have to really look closely to see them.

A lot depends on the weather tomorrow.  If it's sunny, I'm going to embark on a weeding marathon. And then a planting marathon. If it rains ... I'll just sit inside and read. Tee-hee. :P

Whew!  It's been raining for nearly a week.  I don't know how much rain has fallen because I don't have a rain gauge.  (Maybe I should get one.) The rain has been good for my plants and the weeds, both.  My poor garden is so weedy that I'm embarrassed to take pictures of it. *sheepish*

The bamboo continues to run rampant.  I've been kicking shoots down as I cross their path out in the yard.  They seem to grow in a straight line, presumably following a segment of root under the ground.  I guess if we were super industrious, we'd use the shoots to pinpoint the root's location and dig it up.  With everything else that needs to be done, I don't really see that happening.

I lost one tomato seedling.  Luckily, I have a few others that are candidates for replacing it.  I actually have more leftover tomato seedlings than I have space to plant them in the garden.  I would ordinarily give them away, but since the seedlings have some sort of issue that may be contagious, I think I'll just hang on to these and plant them ... somewhere.  I'm on the lookout for large cheap pots now.  Maybe I'll buy one of those upside-down tomato growing bag things.  I haven't decided yet.

That one tomato seedling is the only seedling that I've lost so far. *knocks on wood*  My poor tomatoes still look scrawny and sickly compared to other tomato plants I've seen around. *sigh*  I hope they catch up!

Today I noticed that three of my beans have finally sprouted.  I was starting to wonder if I'd planted them incorrectly.  I'm not sure which of the three types of beans the sprouts are.  I'll have to dig out my planting diagram and compare it to the sprouts.  I'm excited about the beans, yay! 

I still have some sprouts indoors that desperately need to be transplanted: chamomile, balloonflower, and tulsi.  Hopefully I won't accidentally nuke these in the sunlight like I did with the other non-pepper or tomato seedlings. 

Oh, and the shiso. The shiso seedlings definitely need to be transplanted from the pots where they're growing wild. I think I'll put some in the space I saved for the leeks that didn't make it.

I also have a bunch of plants from the farmer's market to plant in the herb garden.  As long as it doesn't rain, it looks like it will be a very busy weekend for me.

So, we have bamboo.  It came with the house.  It is definitely an effective screen between our yard and the neighbors on either side - that's the plus.  The negative is that it is trying to take over the yard.

We bought our house last winter.  One day in the spring we were shocked when we walked out in the yard and there were bamboo shoots all over the yard.  They literally sprang up overnight.  It looked like we were under attack from burrowing aliens that erupted from the ground in a coordinated attack.  It's seriously freaky.

The good news is that they're easily mown over, if you catch them while they're new and pliable. 

It's that time of year again.

Here's a bamboo shoot in the middle of my garden, next to the mustard. That bamboo shoot was not there yesterday, and it's already four inches tall. 


That shoot would've been useful if it had sprung up where I planted the beans, but the mustard really doesn't need it.

Here's another bamboo shoot out in the yard. 

While weeding today, I realized that bamboo is just like wire grass, except several times larger.  It has segments above and below ground, and it sends up shoots with leaves on them.  Both are pains in the butt when they grow in your garden.

We're hoping that the bamboo makes good bean poles. Well, bean teepees, actually. Maybe we should've lashed the poles together with wire grass instead of string. Hmm ...