Good times in the melon patch

Due to the success of last year's volunteer cantaloupe we decided to expand our garden efforts this year by starting a melon patch. We chronicled the actual process of starting the patch in a post on Gardenaut. Since then we planted watermelon, pumpkins and two types of cantaloupe. Oddly enough I don't like watermelon, pumpkin, or cataloupe but growing them has been a hoot. We've had some success and have learned a lot in the process. (whoops I forgot that I do like the pumpkin cheesecake bars that Dianne makes, but other than that I'm not much for pumpkins).

Our seeds sprouted nicely and the plants took off as you can see in this photo:

We've had a lot of fun searching through the foliage looking for ripening fruit. The first things to fruit were the watermelons. We planted Sugar Babies - a smaller variety that produces round fruits that are dark green. They are supposed to get up to 8lbs, but ours probably topped out at about 5 or 6 pounds. Not too bad for our first go at it. One lesson learned is that we need to be planting a seedless variety. When we sliced open our first melon I was stunned at the number of seeds inside. Another lesson was that we need to harvest a bit sooner - many of the seeds had actually started to germinate inside the melons, which I thought very unusual. I'd never seen this in any fruit or veggie, but perhaps it's more common than I realize.

Here's a shot of our first slice into a melon - the tomatoes are from our garden too. I don't know where the dirty dishes came from.

See what I mean about the seeds:

D reports that despite the seeds the fruit was quite sweet. These look a little "rindy" to me too - as in there's more of the white part than I'm used to seeing, but maybe that's because I'm used to seeing store bought melons.

The cantaloupes were next to ripen. Unfortunately most of them seemed to ripen at the same time, which happened to coincide with our beach vacation. Here are young versions of our two cantaloupe varieties:

I didn't really know how to tell when they were ripe, but my dad suggested that they were ripe when they fell off the vine. He is not a gardener so I don't know how he knew that but he was right. When they're ripe they literally fall off the vine right into your hand.

The variety in the top photo, we'll call this one the non-lobed variety, ripened first and I hear they were quite tasty. Mr. O ate a bunch of them almost by himself. When we got back from vacation we had a couple of the lobed fruits that weren't rotten but we haven't had a chance to slice into them yet (just got back yesterday afternoon). We'll have to report on their taste in a later post.

After many unsuccessful efforts we have finally been able to grow pumpkins. We don't have a ton and they aren't going to win any state fair ribbons for being gigantic, but just having bona fide orange pumpkins in the garden is a major success for us. Unfortunately when we got back from vacation I noticed that one fruit was covered in squash beetles. With each new success come new challenges. I plan to cut that fruit off the vine tonight, gingerly carry it into the chicken coop and then brush all the beetles off and watch the chickens feast on them. When squash beetles show up turn them into eggs and fertilizer. It's all about permaculture.