The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: Summer Harvest

This year I'm re-evaluating some things, and evaluating the new ones.

I haven't had any luck with melons in the past and had given up on planting the. But then, for some reason, this year I tried a canteloupe type melon I'd never heard of: French Charentais. This one is the variety 'Savor'. I read that you know when to harvest them because the tendril associated with the melon will dry up. I was watching closely. What they didn't say was, the melon will suddenly turn yellowish all over all at once, and that's your clue to get them before the wonderful aroma attracts raccoons and bunnies to eat them about halfway - enough that you won't want what's left. Experience is the best teacher for some things, eh?

It's been a very nice melon with firm flesh and a mild, musky flavor. The plants I put inside a large tomato cage produced several nice-size melons, and the ones that I left free on the compost hill didn't produce much at all. Of course, they weren't watched over and watered like the ones in the cages inside the garden proper.

French Charentais melon 'Savor'

I think I'll plant two cages worth next year and leave the compost pile for something else. Maybe compost.

I harvested what will be the last of the rhubarb for this year. Three whole plants have given up the ghost. One more looked like a goner, too, but has put up a couple new little leaves . I don't know if the others will try to come back next year or not. The aggravating thing is that one of them was the beautiful red-stemmed plant I paid $10 for this spring.

The packet of 'Rainbow' bell peppers I purchased from Morgan County Seeds said it was going to be an assortment of various colored sweet bell peppers. Not knowing which seed would produce which color, I just started a few and set them out. One plant has small dark purple bells that are almost black, and the others all seem to have large fruits that are themselves a sort of rainbow color. They may have turned red or orange if I left them longer, but they look like they're ready to start drying up, so I harvested them. Juicy and mild flavored, and very pretty.

I think I'll forego planting zucchini next year. When I grow them in the cages, they tend to be misshapen, but when I let them sprawl, they take up way too much space. Also, they're always heavily infested with squash bugs. This year I tried sprinkling the plants with diatomaceous earth which is supposed to kill soft-bodied insects that crawl across it. Maybe it would work with worms, but it didn't seem to interfere with the squash bugs. It did, however, make an unsightly white mess on the plants.

Also, the plants I've put out the last three years have borne fruits that are mostly green after the first couple of yellow ones are harvested. (Even though they have names like: 'Easy Pick Gold' and 'Golden Squash'. For now, I have enough frozen from last year for winter soups, and I've frozen some more from this year. I'd rather use the space next year for another planting of melons.

The extreme heat has done a number on the tomato plants, as I feared it would. Actually, I thought I might not get any tomatoes at all. They did set fruit early, and I've gotten several nice fruits. But then, they just put on tons of lush foliage.

One of the free packets of seed I got from Baker Creek was a tomato called 'Black Vernissage'. I set out a couple of plants on the compost hill just for the heck of it, even though the reviews weren't all that great. It's a pretty little speckled salad-size tomato (in the picture below they're next to a 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' normal size tomato for comparison). The taste isn't anything special, so I won't be taking up any more space for those in the future.

As for the cherry tomatoes which I collected seed from my neighbor last year: I planted out two plants from the seeds of large golden, super sweet cherry tomatoes, and one produced (smaller) golden tomatoes, but the other produced red ones. You never know what you might get from collecting hybrid seeds.

Not even the ones from the purchased packet of 'Sun Gold' grew to much size, and none of them are super sweet like the neighbor's were last year. I can't judge them this year, though, because it's been such a brutal year weather-wise.

One thing I didn't have much of this year - thank goodness, and surprisingly - was tomato hornworms. Here's one I did manage to overlook until it grew gigantic.

Sadly for her (I'm guessing), she didn't live long enough to lay eggs. Or, at least, I didn't see any.

The sunflower seeds I planted were pictured as something quite interesting, and unique. This is the picture from Johnny's Seeds of 'Sunfill Purple':

Neat, isn't it?

Here's what all of mine look like:

Slightly different.

I've had to fight Japanese beetles on the okra so much that I'm not getting to harvest a lot. Spraying with Sevin means you can't harvest for three days, and in that time, the pods can easily get too big. I figured I could use them for seeds next year, but I've decided I hate fighting those beetles too much. This year, the farm land that's way too close to my garden is planted in corn, and the beetles aren't attracted to that, but last year it was soybeans, and they came in hordes. Horrendous, horrible hordes. Next year it will be beans again, and so I think I'll not even bother giving them okra to boot. So sad. I do like okra. Maybe every other year.

Foregoing okra won't help with the roses though. The nasty little buggers love roses maybe more than anything. In order to have any flowers at all, I have to keep spraying with Sevin, which leaves a white residue on the leaves, and even at that, it's nearly impossible, because they burrow down between petals. And this is what just a few will leave within an hour or so:

And when this many attack, it's a matter of minutes until there's nothing left but a nub:

Makes me so mad. If I want roses while the beetles are present (from June through September!) - and I do - I have to spray the buds with toxic insecticide as soon as they start to show color, then spray them again when they begin to open, and then cut them and bring them indoors when they're open enough to keep opening. Grrrrr.

I'm going to look for an insecticide that will kill them which has a different mode of action from Sevin next year, as I've already sprayed that three years in a row, and I'm concerned about the development of resistance.

But, on the bright side, I have been getting some pretty bouquets: