Gardens

It’s been just over a month since I planted and posted our little garden. In spite of the very dry weather we have been having it is growing even faster then the kids. The tomato plant has some good size green tomatoes and the yellow pepper and yellow squash are showing some signs of fruit developing. But the watermelon is the king of the garden. Not only is it spreading to cover the whole bed but it is the only one the rest of the family is taking any interest in. This comes as no surprise and is the reason I only planted one of each of the others. When the first small watermelon was about the size of a quarter, I dragged the children over to the dirt pile they had been told not to play in for weeks. I explained that it was a baby watermelon and it was going to get bigger and then we would get to eat it. They looked at it and at me in complete disbelief. A few days latter I dragged them over again. This time it had more then doubled in size and their mouths began to water. We now have to check the watermelon every day before and after school to see how much bigger it has gotten. It probably has a week or two more to go before we can take it in side and see if we have watered it enough to get sweet juicy home grown melon.

This past week I finally got the opportunity to plant the pumpkin and watermelon we started from seed in the house. I had gotten 4 little containers of soil and seed from Kmart which fit nicely into a plastic Chinese take out dish. The clear plastic top made a great little green house and the kids thought it was really cool when the seedlings pushed the top off. It may be too late to get pumpkins and watermelon from them but the kids are really having fun watching them grow. They now have a home in the yard around yet another old tree stump. So far the garden locations have been determined by already hard to mow areas around old rotting tree stumps. The first garden covers the area where the ground was sinking from the rotting process and was hard to not get the mower stuck. The second one has a partial stump sticking up and a little sinking too. It actually looks like a cool natural garden feature now it is surrounded by a circle of salvaged bricks and healthy topsoil. And both spots are much easier to mow around.