Archive for October, 2008
I purchased a cantaloupe transplant from a nursery last June and planted it in one of our new raised beds. This transplant is my first attempt to grow cantaloupe in a long time. So far, it has exceeded my expectations.
I decided that I needed to give this plant a head start, because I planted it late. So I fertilized it with water soluble fertilizer about once every week or two for the first few months. For the past few months, it’s vines have grown so quickly that they have been spreading out of the raised bed and onto the rocks below.
This picture shows the first cantaloupe fruit developing on the vines. It’s about 6 inches long. It’s smaller than a typical cantaloupe, but it’s heavy for its size. Even so, I am excited to get a fruit that large. The last time I grew cantaloupe, the fruit only grew to about 2 inches long.
Cantaloupes that are properly ripened can be very delicious. However, my experience has been that the flavor of cantaloupes varies a lot. Some are not very sweet.
Cantaloupes are well worth eating when they are in season and tasting their best. The main season for them is middle and late summer in the US. A few years ago, I learned that cantaloupe is full of vitamins A and C. Since then, I have been cultivating my taste for them.
October 10 2008 | Melons | 1 Comment »
This is a picture of our purple solanum (potato flower) bush. It’s a large beautiful shrub. I think it’s decades old, because its biggest trunks are 4 or 5 inches thick. It is filled with purple flowers almost continuously from spring through autumn.
Our solanum grows incredibly fast. If I don’t prune it regularly, it grows like crazy, until it takes up half of our patio area. I usually give it a severe pruning about every 2-3 months to keep it in a box shape. Because it grows so fast and can be trained into different shapes, it makes for a good natural privacy wall. But without regular pruning, it gets overgrown and out-of-control quickly.
Our solanum is frost sensitive. It loses many of its leaves after a frosty spell. During a freeze about a year and half ago when the temperature here fell into the 20s, our shrub lost all of its leaves. But it began to grow back about a month or two later.
October 07 2008 | Solanum | No Comments »
Our Mr. Lincoln rose bush is blooming again right now, after about a two month hiatus. Mr. Lincoln is a classic red rose. Its flowers have the strong fragrance of an old-fashioned rose. It’s yet another one of my favorite roses.
The flowers of Mr. Lincoln are very large when they open up fully. Sometimes, I think that is when they look their best. One of the great things about growing one’s own rose bushes is being able to see the flowers open up completely. The commercially grown roses I have bought usually do not open up fully.
Unfortunately, Mr. Lincoln roses tend to lose their petals just a few days after opening. So it’s a real treat when numerous flowers are fully open on the same bush at the same time.
October 02 2008 | Roses | No Comments »
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