The Great Watermelon Fiasco

Posted on Monday 16 October 2006 at 03:55

My friend Jackie dropped me an email the other day, which incidentally reminds me I have been demonstrating how not to keep a blog lately. Now that you all know what not to do to be a blogger, I shall present to you what turned out to be the Garden Fiasco of 2006. It actually wasn't the brassicae.

We did in fact harvest broccoli and cauliflower in small amounts this year -- small because by the time I transplanted them, I was convinced they were all going to die anyway, and I stuck them in the ground way closer together than they should have been.

Everything grew tall and giant this year. Everything except our Afterthought Watermelons. Now, before you ask me what variety that is and where I got the seed, here's the answer: The seed came from my seed fridge, and the variety was actually Sugar Baby, planted late-late-late in June.

We shipped our largest and best melons in with our last TYDOS order, for which I owe my customers a huge apology. The silly things were white inside. Even right before we went away. Dave picked the last couple and left them on the counter the two weeks we were gone, hoping they'd ripen inside. Errr, not so much.

The vines hadn't frozen down yet when we got home, and they had grown another couple of melons. Those ones were somewhat pinkish inside (first week of October, good grief) and actually tasted like a watermelon. We have one left sitting on the counter, according to the Breakneck Theory of Melon Ripening, which I personally question. It ain't a canteloupe, buddy. There's only so much it can do when it's picked that prematurely.

In better news, if I plant my Sugar Babies as Sugar Baby instead of Afterthought, we should be able to not waste our customers' box space next fall. I'm looking at getting some nice row covers that would aid this venture. Now if only the wind would slow down a bit so I could go clean my garden out.