Garden Report

The garden report contains both good and bad news. The bad is that the cantaloupe plants have come down with a foliar affliction, either a mildew or virus; and many of the tomato plants have become afflicted, as near as I’ve been able to determine, with the Tomato Mosaic Virus. The cantaloupes continue to put on new that is so far out running the affliction, but not very many little cantaloupes remain on the vine. The tomato plants all have tomatoes hanging from them, some as large as a ripe tomato, and seem to be unaffected. They also continue to put on new growth and flowers. The tomatoes in a large container on the patio are doing fine.

The watermelons are growing well but all but a few little watermelons sloughed off, I am guessing that I let the soil dry out. I have begun to give them a good soaking every two days and the vines are putting on little watermelons. The watermelon you see above is doing fine and continuing to grow, and there are two others that are in the 4 – 6 inch range.

There is no problem at all with pollination of the melon flowers as there are honey bees always working the plants. Additionally, the ladybugs seem to have taken control of the aphid problem and the soap water spray is no longer necessary.

Some creature ate all the leaves off my little habanera plants, which remain only a few inches tall, though I planted them when I planted the tomatoes. The plants had started putting on new growth when the critter, I’m guessing a gecko, struck. I cut up large soda bottles and put sections around the plants for protection but the very day I put them out Dusty snuck under the garden fence to play with them.

He trampled the onions and retrieved one of the soda bottle barriers for a toy. For some reason he really likes to play with plastic bottles and is forever unearthing them from the back yard. Since the bottles make quite an obnoxious racket as he slides them across the patio I trick him into giving them up for one of his other toys and throw them away.

The garlic, onions, carrots, both crops of lettuce, and cucumbers are all doing very well.