21st Century Teetotaler

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Photo of the Week: Harvest

It's been awhile since I've done a gardening update so I thought I'd post a picture of my first harvest. It was definitely a learning experience. For example, critters really love eating melon flowers so getting even one cantaloupe was a challenge. The first melon got gnawed on by presumably a chipmunk or ground squirrel and I didn't notice the second one until frost killed off the vines. There wasn't much flesh and it wasn't sweet or tasty but it produced a surprising amount of seeds for next spring.

I had better success with the root vegetables. Lessons were learned with the sweet potatoes, namely that they like their space. Each container is holding three plants. The three in the top container were grown surrounded by carrots, cantaloupe, and sunflowers. The three in the bottom container were grown in more isolation

The carrots were pretty simple to grow and their size seems determined by how early they were planted. The largest one is a little over 13 inches long. In total I had 15 carrots but 4 were small and not worth harvesting so I left them to see if they will go to seed next year.

Overall I planted 4 cantaloupe seeds and got 2 to sprout, although one was extremely stunted. The six sweet potatoes were store bought plants. I don't know how many carrot seeds I planted but it was more than double what I ended up with.

Next year I plan to add corn, peas, and strawberries to the mix.