Melon-coly

Two pumpkins hanging inside the box and outside

In the back bed, outside the fence, I planted three seeds - watermelon (sugar baby), pumpkin (small sugar) and a melon (I think Jenny Lind, I'm not sure). I wrote it down on a piece of paper, what I planted and where, but of course I got into the house and could not find the paper. Two of the three began to grow. The third did not. I took a guess and replanted the pumpkin seeds.


Fortunately for me, as they have grown, they all look different so I can now tell them apart. And it was the pumpkin that did not grow originally, but now I have pumpkin all over the place.

The biggest pumpkin on the path between the boxes

The leaves of the three plants look markedly different.

The large one is the pumpkin, the smaller one, which looks similar is the melon and the one that looks totally different is the watermelon.

 The pumpkin plant looks a lot like the zucchini or summer squash plants with the same big yellow flowers and is as prickly as they are, but vines more.

The pumpkin vine, growing out of the box, across the path, through the asparagus and into the Potager's Strawberry bed!

Twining through the pumpkin is a melon. While prickly like the pumpkin, it's flowers are smaller, and it's fruit is still very tiny. I'm guessing that the pumpkin grew so much faster that it shaded the melon and that's why the fruit is just starting now that it has climbed it's way out of the pumpkin's shadow. I have searched through the prickly tangle of leaves and haven't found any baby melons except the ones still attached to flowers and they are tiny still. I am doubtful we will have melon this year.

To the right of this flower there is a tiny melon, to the right of that is a larger pumpkin just starting out.

The swollen part under the flower will be a melon.

There are a few watermelons at this stage

The watermelon has very different leaves and, due to it's unfortunate run in with the ground hog, it is also just starting to bear fruit.

This is a small watermelon when mature, so I think it will not take as long as a large watermelon. It's possible the watermelon may ripen before it begins to get cold.

It's amazing how fast summer is going, isn't it?

This is the biggest watermelon, at about 2 inches

I wasn't thinking ahead when I planted these melons out of the Potager so they are protected by a mish-mash of whatever I can find to keep critters out. It's probably been working because the total effect is offensive to even wild animals! Note to self, be better prepared with extra fencing next year!

You may notice that there is a tee-pee in there. I originally planned to add wooden supports to the tee-pee for the melons to climb up. I never did that. So now it's another part of the mish-mash.  As ugly as it is, since that first ground hog attack, the melons have been unscathed, so it is working. It's proof that you don't need a well-laid out Potager to grow vegetables in. Just some good soil and water and a mish-mash of assorted fencing!

Do you see What I see?

Foodie Friday - Stuffed Squash

This year I am growing regular yellow squash and One-Ball Squash. Like 8-ball zucchini, the One-Ball Squash grows round and should be picked while young. Both taste great, the variety of regular squash I am growing is very mild and buttery, so the one balls may be more "squashy" flavored, but still mild and tender. The regular shaped squash is more useful in things like kebabs or grilled vegetable sandwiches. The One-Ball shines as a stuffed squash. Both are great sliced and roasted or sauteed.

Like the 8-Ball Zucchini, the One-Ball squash is prolific, leading to my husband's nightly moan, "Squash again?" This squash has been cooked nightly every way known to man (and occasionally making an appearance in omelets in the morning.) My husband looks at me and says, "Did I ever tell you that I don't like squash?"

Too bad, hubby. The squash borer hasn't killed my plants yet and they are producing a lot.
In spite of careful spraying, before the summer ends, the squash borer always wins. So we must "enjoy" the squash while they are in abundance.

The adult Squash Borer - it lays the eggs that hatch into caterpillars that dig into the squash plant and kill it

So the other night I made up a recipe on the fly after work that used whole squash - stuffed. The nice thing about the One-Ball (and the 8-Ball Zucchini) is that when you stuff them, everyone gets their own individual squash. It's so cute!
I cooked organic ground beef with onions, peppers and garlic (all from the garden) and seasoned with salt and pepper.
While it was cooking I cut the tops off 3 squash and cut the bottoms only enough to level them in the greased baking dish. Then I scooped out the innards, leaving about a half inch of squash evenly all around. I didn't take photos of this because I was making this up on the fly and, not knowing how good it would end up tasting, I didn't know this was going to be posted on the blog. Sorry about that. When the beef was done cooking I stirred in an egg and some whole wheat seasoned breadcrumbs and mixed all that together, then stuffed it all into the squash. I topped the meat with slices of Monterey Jack cheese, because everything tastes better with cheese. :)
I took two cans of diced tomatoes in sauce and poured it all over the squash, sprinkled it liberally with Penzey's Italian Seasoning and baked it at 350 degrees.  Like I said, I wasn't planning on putting this on the blog so I don't really know how long I baked it. Hubby and I went outside and did some work on the yard and then came in and checked on it and it was ready. I'm thinking 45 minutes? The meat was precooked, so it was only the squash that was baking. It was fork tender when done.

Not the best photo in the world, but this is what it looked like when done. It looks almost as messy as the counter I photographed it on. But it was delicious! I ate half and I was full. The other half heated up nicely in the microwave at work the next day.
And hubby the squash hater? He ate two.

Bean Fungi?

My pole beans have a bean fungi - the kind that lives in the soil and kills off my seedlings.

I have pulled them out and replanted the beans, but I fear without innoculant, I will continue to lose them.

However some have survived and are beginning to climb the tee-pee. Maybe it isn't a fungus, maybe it was just the heat or bad watering practices. Who knows? I just hope I don't lose anymore. It's getting late to still be planting my pole beans.

Wordless Wednesday - Let us prey

Garden Update - Tuesday, July 17

Welcome to my Potager in the middle of July! I am harvesting cucumbers, swiss chard, squash, zucchini, beets, scallions and lettuce. The red onions, garlic and shallots have been harvested and are drying.

Shallots

The jalapenos could be harvested, but I'm letting them get a bit larger first.

I have planted a lot of jalapenos so I can make a lot of jalapeno jelly! But that will be later in the season.
These babies will be made into poppers and used to season many dinners to come. Yummy!

The basil has been made into pesto and used to season many dishes but is in no danger of being over-harvested, in fact it's getting hard to keep up with.

The King of the North peppers I grew from seed are loaded with peppers that will be used soon. The plant my son gave me with banana peppers is ready now.

The tomato plants are loaded with green tomatoes. I can't wait for them to ripen! (But I will)

The leeks are finally fattening up. Well, most of them anyway!

The Rosa Bianco Eggplants are filled with flowers. No little eggplants yet.

There are three small pumpkins forming on my pumpkin vine! I'm hoping they survive to make our pumpkin pies this Thanksgiving.

The Ever Bearing strawberries are giving a small amount of ripe fruit daily. Not enough to do more than sprinkle on cereal. Which is fine, since the raspberries have just about stopped and I need some fruit for my Oatmeal!

I pulled out the collards. It was a lesson learned. They did grow well, but they definitely needed some protection. I need to improve the soil where they were with some manure and prepare it for some fall crops to be transplanted next month.

I'm not too sure about the broccoli. One of the three plants is starting to head up, but it doesn't look like a nice head. I'll wait a bit and see if it improves.
Thank you for stopping by. There is more growing that hasn't gotten to the picking and showing stage yet. But so far it is turning out to be a good year!

I am linking this up to  at An Oregon Cottage , where Jami's harvest makes me weak in the knees - If only I had more gardening space!

Real Food Summit

Many of you who know me, know that in addition to working full time and teaching at VBS last week, I also "attended" the Real Food Summit on-line.

Part of the reason for the Potager out back is that I like eating real food, organic and as fresh and local as possible. You can't get fresher than your own backyard!
But even among the Real Food Summit presenters there are differing opinions.  One would say everyone needs to take supplements, another said if you eat a real food diet you won't need supplements. One would say don't eliminate food groups from your diet, another was a Paleo Diet supporter. One presenter told us to eat a diet that people have eaten for a thousand years, another said we need to eat photo-plankton. Photo-plankton? No thanks.
In spite of all that, I think all the presenters would agree that eating food that has not been processed in modern plants, nor injected with any kind of growth hormone, nor genetically modified, nor fed food it was not created to eat is what we all should be doing.
A few things really interested me, such as Rami Nagel's discussion on how with proper diet we can remineralize our teeth. Small cavity? Take cod liver oil. It was a fascinating topic and had some interesting research.
And the presentation from the US Wellness Meats' founder, John Wood, had some interesting information (did you know that modern field fertilization started when the government had a excess of nitrogen left over from bomb making after World War Two? They discovered the corn produced twice as much. Then they needed to use it. So they began to feed it to cows. So a grass fed animal was now fed a grain diet. Not the best of ideas for the health of the cow - or the meat that cow now made)
I really enjoyed Matt Stone's presentation yesterday. His claim that obesity is an addiction caused by eating foods that increase our dopamine levels made a lot of sense. Real foods are more satiating so we naturally eat less of them, which will, in most people, cause weight loss. But if we eat less of a processed food, we are not satiated causing our brain to think there is a shortage of food and hold on to our weight. His presentation was well balanced and made a lot of sense to me.

So what did I walk away with?
Pretty much the same thing I started with.
I am a big fan of Michael Pollan's "Food Rules": Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.
I would add for those of you who haven't read his little book,  that the food should be organic and local, prepared at home as often as possible and never made by someone who works in a laboratory.
I am more concerned now about the health of my soil, having heard over and over that food grown in soil without micronutrients cannot contain micronutrients. I need to work harder on my compost pile and making sure that the soil has rich material in it, not just organic fertilizer added.

All in all I enjoyed the Summit and felt it was worthwhile. While I couldn't listen to all the presenters (there are only so many hours in a week) I got to hear two a day and felt that it was most worthwhile.