Here's the thing. The sun and I are not friends. I'm skin cancer prone and wear hats and major amounts of sunscreen. But the sun IS the friend to my little buddies in the garden and we haven't seen much of the big guy in a few weeks now. Hello? We need you here, dude. I promise to wear a hat.
In the last month, the tomatoes that popped up so quickly (they loved that mid-April heat wave) are now
kind of lollygagging. I will say that the watermelon plants I got in Templeton are already making their move, especially the Chilean heirloom. Here's a recent photo, taken on May 23. If you compare it to the photo taken May 9 (the second photo in the May 9 blog), you can already see the difference, with the Chilean (top right) already inching its way up the trellis. Also in the new photo is a recent addition to the "watermelon patch" - a transplant I grew from a seed in the kitchen window. It's a Hokkaido Black Watermelon and is the speck of green to the right of the other two seedlings and next to the wood marker. They're supposedly very rare but somehow Jeff managed to get his hands on some seeds for one of my Christmas gifts. So I now have three different kinds of watermelon growing this year: the Iowa heirloom, which should provide the kinds of melons I had last year (BIG and green) and two types of black watermelons, the Chilean and the Hokkaido. I have two other Hokkaidos going (also started from those seed) over by the grape vine. Those went in awhile ago and are starting to rival the Chilean in movement.
A word about "awhile go" -- one of the things I'm learning from talking to more experienced gardeners is the importance of keeping a garden journal or log of when you do what. This way you can learn better what works and doesn't work. When I recently interviewed Memo Rodriguez, master gardener for the Bix restaurant in Napa, and asked him when he put in his English peas, he didn't say "oh, I don't know, maybe a couple months ago," he gave me a date: March 6. Because he had written it down.
Duh, huh? Really it's recommended that the journal start on January 1. That way each year, the gardener can look out over the year before and see what worked and what didn't and then put a plan into place for the coming year. Going on the philosophy that it's better late than never I am officially starting today, June 1, to keep more accurate notes of not only when I plant but when I, say, give them their spritz of kelp emulsion (more on that to come).
This is what I've pieced together for the planting this spring:
Early March: Grape vine (in sleeve on left in photo)
Mid-March: Dutch onions plus red pepper and cucumber seedlings went in when we built the bed (in the above photo you can see the yellow cucumber flowers on the edge of the bed above and I've just harvested three cucumbers; below you can see the red pepper in the bottom left corner and the onions just above it)
Early April (April 9 to be exact -- dated it in my Tomatomania story --good girl!): Planted the six tomato seedlings I got from Tomatomania plus basil and marigolds (see below).
Mid April: A seventh tomato seedling, kindly left by an anonymous community gardener.
Early May: Four watermelon plants: two Hokkaido transplants and the Templeton seedlings (May 3 to be exact -- dated in May 9 blog).
Mid May: One more Hokkaido transplant added, plus some lettuce transplants (from Trisha) and 12 transplants from seeds started at Esalen. Note: the Esalen seed trays were carefully marked with sticks when I put them in but, alas, then fell out of the trays during the drive home so I'm going to call this the "surprise bed" and enjoy the adventure of saying "is it oracle or spicy mustard?" as the little guys get going in earnest. Will post a photo of my surprise bed in the next blog entry. Perhaps you can all start guessing as to what's coming up...
So that's it. Now all we need is a little more sun.