The days have been busy and the nights have been short here in PODland. Yesterday all the cucumbers made it onto the the deck — in the nick of time, really. More on that later, I’m sure.
Melon French Orange Hybrid. How lame is that? Someone, please, come up with a good one for this year’s melon.Whatcha’ got?
Name me, please.
75 days from now we should be seeing some fruit off these tough, disease-resistant vines. A conundrum: cucurbits dislike having their roots disturbed during the transplanting process, but the fruits need a while to mature. Which makes direct-seeding the way to go root-wise but that’s less optimal ripening-wise. What’s a gardener to do? Well, these were seeded a few weeks ago in peat pots and the bottoms of the pots were carefully removed just prior to transplanting on Wednesday, allowing the roots to roam freely and unmolested.
Posted in Melons & Cucumbers
Tagged Container Gardening, french melon hybrid, growing melons from seed
Things are, perhaps, a tiny bit behind schedule in the world that is plants on deck. It’s time to get back on track. Sleep is being lost. And that’s serious business.
Smoking Time Jazz Club
After a lovely bonus evening’s (thanks overbooked airline!) happy hour oysters and an unspeakably delicious dinner in the Crescent City’s CBD, a leisurely bat-tastic wander around the Quarter, and a strangely unsuccessful attempt to catch one last show on Frenchman, POD’s minder and endurer retired rather early to the classy airport Ramada for a nap before rising at an hour when vampires haven’t even begun to worry about daybreak.
A full three (3!) hours before the series of alarms were scheduled to go off — and after only two restless hours “sleep” — the image of wilting, thirsty, leggy seedlings popped into this sleep-averse brain.
Gardening night terrors. Seriously?
“Damn gardeners,” muttered the endurer.
And so, just hours ago, the grow light has been restored, a healthy dose of water added (and immediately wicked up through the pots) and the fancy new French Orange hybrid melons have joined the tomatoes and poblanos.
Last year’s struggles with diseases and less-than stellar yields means that POD’s giving hybrids a shot this year. Vaguely creepy, but if they work…
Onstage this year:
Adam F-1: “High yielding and long lasting parthenocarpic [POD translation: seedless] hybrid with crispy fruits. Smaller 2-4″ fruit perfect for pickles. Resistant to powdery mildew, downy mildew, and cucumber mosaic virus.”
Akito F-1: “Main Season hybrid produces high yields of straight and uniform dark green 6-8″ fruit with market winning taste. Powdery Mildew resistance and CMV resistance.” Holy crap! As POD’s Seeds of Change shopping cart was being populated, these $24.50 (for 50 seeds) got the axe. And, since Warminster’s Burpee will be providing tomato seeds anyway, we’re hitting them up for the Salad Bush Hybrid, too: “High yields in small spaces. Very compact, strong tolerance to powdery and downy mildew, left spot, mucumber mosaic virus and scab. Very tasty slicers 8″ long, with smooth, dark green skin.” It’s been a while since bush cucumbers had a space on deck, so it’s time to give ‘em another shot anyway.
Bonus: And Burpee tossed these into my already over-stuffed shopping cart, the White Wonder, “Burpee introduced this now classic cucumber in 1893, after receiving it from a customer in western New York. Pale ivory, the 6-8″-long and 2-3″-wide fruits have an exceptionally crisp texture, making for excellent fresh eating or tasty pickles. Produces high yields, even in high heat.”
Adam, Salad, and Wonder will be direct seeded (assuming there’s room) into toasty 65-70 degree, light soil with a pH of 5.8-6.7.
POD’s had mixed results with melons, but loves, loves, loves them. Last year just a few melons were harvested, but oh, how rewarding those melons were. Plus, fancy cucurbits are ridiculously expensive and difficult to find. Last year’s charentais was heavenly. But there was only one of them. Not one plant (well, that too) but one melon!
So this year:
Kiara F-1: “High quality true French charentais with authentic flavor. Strong vines provide excellent fruit protection…resistant to fusarium wilt 0, 1, 2; intermediate resistance to powdery mildew.” ARRRRRGGGG! And, the folks at Seeds for Change are totally letting POD down. Not available. Back to the drawing board. So annoyed. Since POD’s become so attached to the notion of charentais flavor in the sturdy form of a disease-resistant hybrid, Park Seeds answered the call: “Measuring about 4 1/2 inches in diameter, French Orange Hybrid is a superb eating experience and a great change of pace from cantaloupes and honeydews. The vines are very disease-tolerant for even bigger, healthier yields.”
Sprite: Hey, Diana, wanna’ trade? Lemme’ know and we can work something out.
These beauties will be started inside about 3-4 weeks (say, late April-ish) before being transplanted into light, well-drained, warm 65 degree soil with a pH of 6.0 and above. Mulch well.
It’s Just a Habit: part two in a series of notes for POD 2011
We may be grasping for a leg of hope here, but nutrient deficiencies were a rather large bane of the little blue deck’s 2010 existence. Which seems a bit ironic, really, because this was the year POD went all-organic. Like Dylan in reverse.
Fancy soils were purchased, bags of worm poop were made into teas, stinky seaweed and fish emulsion fertilizers were religiously applied, and wee bags of frighteningly expensive organic fertilizer (also stinky) were sprinkled. And what happened? Tomatoes died, beans fell down dead, and peppers rotted.
So what’s a container gardener to do? Experiment! How, you ask?
1) Buy a pH tester and test the darn soil.
2) Be like Noah and plant two of everything. One in lovely organic soils, treated with organic remedies, and fertilized with smelly organic stuff. And the other in old-fashioned time-release fertilized soil, bathed in bright pink MiracleGro, and treated with chemical bug killers.
So what do you think? Tell me honestly.
[10/14/10 Note to Self: Head up to Fairmount Organic Recycling Center next year for free compost. Thanks, Domestic Efforts!]
So last weekend, in a fit of frustration, a bunch of plants on deck were yanked and became seeds on deck. The Boothby Blonde cucumber, Black Cherry and Isis Candy tomatoes, and all the beans were ditched (more on that later).
In their place cooler weather crops have been oh-so-optimistically planted. 
Plants on Deck 2.0 features fresh lettuce, Franklin Hybrid Brussels Sprouts (technically the wrong planting season, but they almost worked last year), Javelin Hybrid parsnips, Erbette and Charlotte chard, Romanesco, French Breakfast and Long Scarlet radishes (which have already poked their heads above ground), and Winterbor kale.
Champ is still blooming and Mr. Stripey is showing signs of disease but he’s still largely green, so he gets a pass for now. Aphids continue their iron-fisted reign (and four adult brown marmorated stink bugs were killed yesterday) so next up on the hit list are the besieged True Lemon and the newly-breached Charentais.
Charentais and Cake
The mystery melon? That top-heavy Charentais? That muskmelon that emerged from saved seeds?
DELICIOUS!
This is why I garden. Stop by Smitten Kitchen for the cream cheese pound cake recipe. Blueberries courtesy of Grand Junction, MI — just 33 miles from POD’s roots.
Before the Minnesota Midget melon succumbed to aphids, three darlings were collected. And one, two-pound Charentais awaits the knife.
still life with melon
Apparently, the infestations continue. As if brown marmorated stink bugs, aphids, and white flies weren’t enough. Spotted cucumber beetles have been spotted and smoted. Next year, perhaps it’s worth trying a reflective aluminum foil mulch.
