Tag: watermelon

One Summer Morning

July is nearing an end and the garden is teeming with living things.

July is nearly over. Hard to believe, but I’m glad. It’s not a fun month here in Central Florida. Not that what’s coming is any better. The Hurricane months are the worst. Soon we’ll be watching those storms that build off the African coast and wonder where they will go.

But, that fun is for the future. Today I discovered a big Swallowtail caterpillar on my celery plant! Swallowtails need dill, fennel, parsley and apparently celery for their caterpillars. The dill was gone back in May, and I can’t seem to grow parsley – especially not in summer. I have some fennel out front, and checked for caterpillars, and found none. I didn’t realize my celery would attract swallowtails.

This big guy was just there! I had not seen him while he chewed and grew, down in the center of the stalks. All day I went outside to check on him. I’m certain he will disappear.

The celery grew from a stalk that came from the grocery store. Today, I am starting another celery plant in a glass on my windowsill. It is very easy to grow.

Black swallowtail caterpillar on celery
black swallowtail caterpillar
Starting celery from cut bunch
celery started from store bought
First little watermelon
First little watermelon

Watermelon

I had to pick my watermelon because the stem area was beginning to rot, for some reason. But, I also discovered watermelon #2 hidden under the vines. I covered it with pine needles to try to keep the raccoons away. I like to kid myself that I can outsmart them.

Celery plant with Swallowtail caterpillar
Caterpillar
Seminole pumpkin vines
Seminole Pumpkin vines
watermelon growing
Watermelon #2

The pumpkin vines (first year) have nearly covered my walkway. I can’t easily move the hose so have to leave it in the middle.

The Holy basil is growing and I’m using it regularly. Firespike flowers are coming out and that will keep the hummingbird happy. The celosia plants are getting tall and should be flowering soon.

Holy basil with flowering stalks
Holy basil
Firespike plant is beginning to bloom
Firespike
Celosia stalks growing in barrel bed
Celosia

Oh The Zinnias!

My garden is full of beautiful Zinnias. I look at each one when I inspect things. I can’t stop photographing them. I only began growing zinnias a couple of years ago, but they have become a favorite. I’ve decided to make dividers for this blog using all my zinnia photos.

This year I have lots of reds, pinks, and gorgeous orange. I have only one yellow, so I’ll be sure to save it. Honestly, I am saving many Zinnia flower heads. Some have grown from saved seeds, but many I planted from newly purchased seeds.

yellow zinnia
Only one plant is yellow.

Skittle

Skittle the cat has always been my shadow in the garden. She very much enjoys it when I inspect things. I can’t spend much time out there with her now because of the horrendous heat. She seems to love it. As long as she can find an uncomfortable looking place to sleep, she is happy.

Skittle

I’m mostly quite happy as I look through the garden. Occasionally I get depressed at the lack of food, but there is always the grocery store. Good thing.

The Monarch butterflies are still fluttering each day. They usually show up around 9:00am. They land on the zinnias frequently. Their tropical milkweed is not flowering now, but soon the swamp milkweed will be.

zinnias divider

Thank you for reading.

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Do You Feel Like a Failing Gardener?

It is sometimes difficult not to feel like a failure when it comes to gardening. When we have high hopes, but the crops simply won’t grow, what then? Chin up, we are all on the journey together.

Summer is the time when gardeners like to brag about their gardens. Pictures are everywhere, on all social media sites, of gorgeous flowers, spacious and manicured backyards, fruit trees, lovely vegetables, perfect plants, and so on. It’s enough to be quite depressing.

If, like me, you sometimes feel like you are failing miserably at gardening, I’m here to remind you that most gardeners don’t share their failures! Every yard has some FAIL moments. And most importantly, we don’t all have the same advantages.

Problems With Peppers

As soon as I wrote a blog page about how happy I was with my pepper plants, they promptly began to die. No kidding. I pulled up my last Ancho poblano plant the other morning. One of the Nu Mex has also bit the dust, due to being stuck in a pot without correct drainage.

The two remaining green tomatoes on my last tomato plant refused to turn red, so I pulled that plant up too. Tomatoes don’t do well in Florida in summer. It was time to re-use the pot and get it ready to grow something else.

dead pepper plants
Dead pepper plants (and tomato)
pepper roots

Let’s see, what else is currently failing in my garden? The Seminole pumpkin plants are doing almost nothing. Two of them have long vines, but not a single pumpkin. Are they growing too late into the season?

None of the watermelon plants look decent, and last year I ate three nice, delicious, watermelons!

Last Year…

What happened this time? I think I planted too late and then I was gone for 2 weeks. We’ve had a drought too.

watermelon eating
Raccoon marks on watermelon
2023 watermelon

I had counted on doing a better job of growing all these things in my second year of gardening. I pictured a stash of pumpkins to last me until next season, and enough watermelon to share with the neighbors. Instead, I have nothing to eat from the garden but basil, some onions, and a few small eggplant.

eggplant and onion
Rosita and purple eggplant, and onion from the garden

I kind of feel like a miserable failure. And looking at videos from other Florida gardeners is not helpful. Their crops are bountiful. Their plants look fabulous. Their gardens are organized, and producing, and the raised beds are filled with great compost.

I look at my failing crops and wonder how much more money I have to spend to get to the point where I have some good dirt for growing. But, I don’t garden to save money. I garden to have food from my yard.

Right now I have a lot of “cowpeas” in the ground. They are (mostly) growing nicely. This will supposedly help my soil by adding nitrogen.

Cowpeas among veggies
cowpeas

If you feel like me, that your yard is working against you, try looking on the bright side. All that stuff that is not growing can help build the compost pile!

What is doing well in the yard? My flowers, specifically the Zinnias, are beautiful. My pineapple is growing. I see more butterflies, bees and hummingbirds than ever before.

When I get to see the little creatures that are enjoying the plants that came up from seeds I planted, I remember that I am on the right track.

grasshopper on zinnia
Grasshopper
green anole lizard
Green anole

Keep Reading

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Picking and Eating Watermelon From My Garden

I managed to grow three watermelons in my Florida backyard this year. Here is how they turned out, and how I figured out when to pick them.

On April 8th I planted watermelon seeds. On June 30th I pick three watermelon from my backyard garden.

As I do every morning, I walked the yard and inspected the vegetable garden. Usually I have a couple of okra to cut (yuk), but my main inspection goes to the beautiful watermelons growing. I’ve never in my long life be able to grow watermelon. This year I had four beautiful melons growing.

As I came to the garden I saw that one of the watermelon vines was pulled back from its usual spot, and then I saw the chewed melon. It was the smallest of the four melons, and probably the easiest for the raccoons to get into.

raccoons broke into a watermelon
Watermelon disaster

I had three more watermelons which were still okay, but they did show signs of claw marks.

I’d been wondering if I would be able to tell when the watermelons were ready to be picked. The seed packet mentioned a browning of the tendril closest to the melon. I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I watched a video and then realized it was the little, curly thing coming off the vine. Sure enough, the ones nearest all my watermelons were brown. So they were all ready to be picked.

watermelon tendril brown
Brown tendril – a sign the melon is ready

Watermelon, From Baby to Being Picked

It took nearly three months, but was worth the wait to have delicious fruit right from the garden! It’s what we gardeners live for.

  • baby watermelon growing on the vine
    Baby watermelon
  • June garden with watermelon
    June 14th garden photo
  • Raccoon marks on watermelon
    Raccoon markings
  • watermelon from the garden
    June 30th, picked my three watermelon

Cutting and Eating

I decided to cut the watermelon outside on the patio table. This mainly comes from my fear of slush pouring out instead of the inside being solid.

Cutting home-grown watermelons from the garden on my outdoor patio table.

Many years ago I worked in the produce section of a grocery store. My job one day was to slice watermelon and package it. As I cut into a big melon, all the insides gushed out all over me and the floor! I never forgot it, and always worry whenever I cut a watermelon.

So I did my cutting outdoors, and I was so happy to see the red inside when I first opened the big melon. Then I tasted it, and yum! I’d grown my very first edible watermelons!

  • inside the watermelon
    Perfect!
  • watermelon cutting board sliced fruit
  • bowl of red watermelon to eat
    Yum!
  • watermelon eating

I’ve only cut the largest watermelon, but it is delicious. Even if the other two are not good, I am so happy to have had one that is perfect.

I saved a bunch of those big, white seeds. I may try to grow more before Fall because we have months of heat still ahead of us.

This type is the Strawberry Watermelon and I bought the seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (the link goes there).

watermelon seeds on glass plate
Saving watermelon seeds

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Watermelons Are Growing Big in June

Today I took some photos of the watermelons growing in the backyard garden. I have four, and they are various sizes. These are the seedlings which were thinned once I chose the best to leave.

Watermelon seedlings
Watermelon seedlings – were thinned down to 4 plants
baby watermelon growing on the vine
Baby watermelon

The watermelons grew from seeds I planted April 8th. I wrote the date on the seed packet. When ordering seeds from The Urban Harvest, a Florida based grower, some seeds, like these watermelons, came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

watermelon in Florida garden
The first melon to grow

The seed packet was set next to each watermelon, for the photos, to help show the size. There is lots of good info on the packet too. And, I still have seeds, which I may pop into the ground around the yard. I don’t really have space for long trailing vines. And do start them directly in the ground (as the packet says). I had a couple of seeds in pots and they didn’t do well at all.

A couple of melons are pretty small still, but the other two are bigger, and I saw a baby on the vine today. I’m trying to train the vines to follow the garden edges. One vine was destroyed by the roofers who were all over the place when replacing our roof recently. Grrr…

Small watermelon in Florida garden

These are Strawberry Watermelons and the seeds came from The Urban Harvest / Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has a great website for anyone growing food in the southern part of the US. I really need to spend some time reading their pages. They have suggestions for growing successful crops in our humid and hot region.

The Urban Harvest will get your seed orders out quickly, and I’ve had great results with their seed packets as well (Moringa and Seminole Pumpkin). They also have wonderful videos and information for those of us beginning the Florida gardening journey. They are based in the Tampa area so the info is specifically for us Floridians.

small watermelon on vine

When is it time to pick my watermelon?

According to the back of the seed packet, the time to pick the watermelon is around day 85. I am at day 66 since planting, so maybe around the end of this month or the beginning of July. The Watermelon Growing Guide, at the Southern Exposure website, has great info.

If I’m lucky they will survive and grow, but I have my doubts. I’ve never grown watermelon before because the vine usually dies very quickly from that white moldy stuff vining vegetables get. The seed packet does say, “Very good disease resistance”. So far I am very impressed with the plants.

watermelon

Many vegetables and flowers I’ve planted are doing really well, but the weather is turning very hot now. This will be the test to see which things can stand the heat.

There were loads of little yellow flowers along the vines, but now I am not seeing as many.

My Little Garden

I began the garden this year, and it is an ongoing process. I am one person, in her sixties, so the going is slow. My son tilled the space and I have done everything else.

I love gardening, but never even thought to grow vegetables in this climate. Now, I am enjoying gardening again. Each day there is something new to see. I can put up with the mosquitoes, humidity and blazing sun for a short time, but it’s enough to get something accomplished each day.

June garden with watermelon
June 14th garden photo – 2023
watermelon next to foot
Garden watermelon

The gardening stories continue…

Mail Order Native Florida Milkweed Seedlings Review

I’ve found a good place to buy milkweed plants online. Ordering plants online can be expensive, so the plants that arrive should be in great shape. Read my review of Whitwam Organics and The Growers Exchange.

Seeds From the Urban Harvest

Growing seeds from the Urban Harvest has been a rewarding experience. My small backyard vegetable garden is off to a great start.

This is a quick review of my experience with the Urban Harvest. This company is located on the western coast of Florida. Elise is the woman who does videos about growing vegetables in this hot Florida climate. I have linked to one of her videos below. She also has a beautiful website with information and seeds for sale. I am so happy to have found her, and very much appreciate her good advice about gardening.

I’m just getting started with my backyard vegetable garden, but so far I’m impressed with the growth from the seeds I bought.

Growing From Seed

Whenever you use seeds to begin a garden, it’s a guess as to how many seeds will actually grow. I’ve had very good luck with my seeds from The Urban Harvest. Everything has grown really well.

If you live in the St. Pete area of Florida (west coast), this company also sells living plants. See more at the Urban Harvest website.

seed packets
Seeds from Urban Harvest

Seed packets cost around $3.00 and all the packets above came from The Urban Harvest even though only two packets contain their label. Shipping was fast. I received a thank you e-mail. In my opinion, customer service is great!

My seeds arrived in April, so I only planted what could handle the summer heat. (The carrots, broccoli and Brussels sprouts will wait until Fall.)

The watermelon and okra were put directly into the ground on April 8th. Of the 12 watermelon seeds I planted, 9 came up. I have thinned them to four plants. I simply don’t have a lot of space for them. (I should have thinned them to 2!)

Watermelon plants day 34
June 4th watermelon on the vine. Almost exactly 2 months after planting.
My largest watermelon – June 4th

Okra

Almost all of the okra seeds sprouted. I transplanted a few of the seeds when thinning the rows, and I don’t suggest doing that. Those transplanted okra plants are not growing as well as the ones I left alone!

okra plant
Okra
okra flower
Okra flower

I’ve never grown, or eaten okra so I only planted three short rows. On May 25th I was picking some okra!

Okra and eggplant

Seminole Pumpkin

On April 8th I put the pumpkin seeds into pots.

Here are the pumpkin seedlings at growing day 10.

Seminole pumpkin seedlings
Pumpkin seedlings – day 10
Pumpkins into ground and doing well.

Now the pumpkins have been growing in the ground since about April 29th. Today is May 12th so these two pumpkin plants are a little over a month old (photo below) from the time I first planted the seeds.

Seminole pumpkin plants, 5/12
May 12th Seminole Pumpkin plants in the garden

Right now the pumpkin plants are growing upward and I hope they will trail off to the edge of the yard once they get going. I am very excited about these native Florida pumpkins! Search YouTube if you want to see how big the vines grow. They can even grow up through trees and produce hanging pumpkins!

Update on the Seminole Pumpkin: Vines are long (June 4th), but no flowers yet. Leaves are turning yellow and I don’t know why. I’ve trained the vines to follow the edge of the yard.

Seminole pumpkin vine
Seminole Pumpkins

Moringa

I was totally unfamiliar with the Moringa tree. The Urban Harvest sells Moringa seeds and I have a three growing in the yard, and one in a small pot. All seeds that were begun in pots sprouted, whereas the ones I put directly into the ground did not.

I wish I had more space and knew more about their growth habits, height and so on. This will be an experiment. Right now I have three planted and growing, but they are small.

Elise of The Urban Harvest has a few videos where she mentions growing the Moringa tree. See one here: Three Tropical Survival Foods You Must Plant in Florida. She has loads of videos that cover all kinds of things to do with Florida gardening. I’ve already learned so much.

Moringa
Moringa

The Moringa trees are also growing more slowly than I expected. They look good and I guess it will take a while for them to become truly tree-like.

Garden Progress

Creating a garden from a grassy space in Florida takes some work. There are many vines and deep roots to remove from all the natural invasion from the lot next door. Then I am left with sand which must be amended for growing.

In the photo below, I have removed the grass, added compost, planted seeds and seedlings (and added more compost and fertilizer) and watered each morning. From here I will add mulch to conserve moisture and keep the ground cooler. Summer is nearly here and it is already too hot after 9:00am for me to do much gardening.

I ordered a second batch of seeds from The Urban Harvest and will definitely buy more at a later date. I highly recommend this helpful place if you are a Florida vegetable gardener.

backyard garden
My garden before the mulch

All plants are organic, and she promotes sustainable and eco friendly gardening practices. Again, how to find information:

Please keep reading the blog…

Here’s What’s Happening in My Florida Yard in May

Aside from the fact that the raccoons are helping themselves to all my tomatoes… red and green… I am still attempting to grow a garden.  The raised bed is filling slowly with dirt and compost, and right now I have cucumbers, tomatoes, summer squash, bell peppers, and eggplant growing.

So far I am eating tomatoes and cukes.  Still waiting for the peppers, squash and eggplant.

raised bed gardening
New Plants in My Raised Bed Garden

None of my vegetable plants were doing very well.  They had plenty of sun and water.  The problem was the soil.  I have been buying bags of organic dirt, but I don’t think it had any type of compost in it.  So I  bought a few bags of compost, and that has helped. I had started my own compost in a pail on my porch and I added that to the raised bed.  What I really need is a composter.

Now my older eggplant is flowering again.  I have some green peppers and can see little cucumbers beginning to grow. But I need more dirt and compost.

eggplant flower growing
Maybe I’ll Get an Eggplant

cucumber blossom on vine
Tiny Cuke

The Rose bush is blooming, with small, but beautiful roses.

I must go outside and check them every day, because the flowers don’t last. Just the other day I got a pure white rose on this bush! But I waited too long and lost the opportunity to get a photo.  Roses are difficult to grow and with the humidity here, I’m afraid of black spot – or whatever they get.

pink rose
Pink Rose with Peach Center

Down toward the back of my house the watermelon vine is getting longer, and baby watermelons are popping out along the stem.

tiny watermelon on the vine
Baby Watermelon

Since I’ve amended the soil with compost, the peppers are doing better. The bells are not very large yet, but I’m afraid the raccoons will pick them before I get to.

green bell peppers growing
Finally, my peppers are growing!

It’s been so dry here in Florida for months. This tropical location is in need of rain. We’ve had very few rainy days, and there have been fires all over the place.

Because of this, I decided to add a cheap bird bath to the corner of my garden. Using a big plastic pot saucer, I added some broken bricks left over from the building of our patio, and filled it with water.   It sits on the corner of the raised bed.  Each day I spray it out and refill while I’m watering the garden.

I do get birds who drink and bathe in the thing. A female cardinal especially seems to like it, and a Cowbird (I think) had a nice long bath the other day. Of course my cats drink from it as well!

bird bath
My Cheap Bird Bath

I know that if I was still living in New Hampshire, gardening would hopefully begin this Memorial Day weekend. Their garden veggies won’t be coming in for a couple more months.