Don't Know Squat About Squash

Taking care of a melon garden is a lot more work that it seems.  You do not just setup some sort of a frame and the melon vines just move in and produce the melons for you.  You need to give the garden much water, not by spraying on the big leaves, which make them look refreshing but actually does not do any good.  The water needs to reach the soil where originally planted the buds.  A handyman would have an x by y frame for the vines to spread.  I am definitely not handy and like to use found objects to build the frame.  So far I have 2 CD towers which I rescued off the curb from a neighbor up the block.  Various poles found in my backyard serve as the vertical parts of the frame.  Several short pieces of string from the packinq of a Nerf, when tied together served as the horizontal parts.  The strings were not but luckily I have an old garden hose laying around.  As the vines spread around, I added pots and poles and even resorted to using two bicycles that I have no other uses for, as part of the "frame."

The melon vines had minds of their own!  I knew they would climb over the fence into my neighbors' yards, but I didn't expect them to squeeze through the plastic strips in the fence and grow up from there.  The melons or squashes in my garden have somewhat spiky vines so I worried the neighbor's grandchildren may get scratched, or at least scared by the vines.  So one day I went over to try to guide them back to my yard.  Lo and behold, one of the vines had a nice, round squash already!  It was so heavy that it pulled the vine down and was sitting on the cement wall.  As I tried to lift the whole thing back over my fence, I snapped it off!  Oh no, a premature death!  The squash whose life got squashed!!!  It was not ripe enough to eat so there was nothing else to do but display it on the kitchen for a few days, then off it went into the compost bin.  I think it was a girl melon, so I shall call it Melon Chloe.  So long, Chloe!

I hope you enjoy the exaggerated melon-drama...

No Lemon, Yes Melon

If someone tells you he is environmentally conscious, would you assume he grows his own fruits and vegetable in a backyard garden?  If that is the requirement, then I am not much of a green person, but I really am.  I walk or use public transportation, instead of drive, most of the time.  I recycle and re-use everyday.  I turn off TVs, lights, computers, etc. when they are not in use.  But gardening so far has always eludes me.  My first attempt at gardening was many years ago when I lived in Long Island City.  The group Astoria Residents Recycling Our Waste (ARROW) just turned a vacant lot into a Green Thumb park, with a section set aside for gardening.  I helped setup the plots and got one assigned to me.  I lived just two blocks away from the new park but weeks then months pass and I never planted anything in the plot.  If there was any plot thickening, it was just weeds taking advantage of my absence.

Years later I have my own house with a backyard.  Long periods of time would go by and I would not spend any time in the backyard.  Last year I decided to maintain a compost bin, even though I did not know what I would do with the stuff once they are made.  From a friend in ARROW I got two more containers for composting and spent more time in the backyard turning and messing around with the bins.  By chance someone my wife knows has some extra melon buds (?) to give away.  The things would normally go to my in-laws but this year they already dedicated their front yard to growing string beans.  I do not recall what got into me but I decided to take a shot at growing them melons.

I do not have much soil area in the back yard so I grew one in a large pot while others went into the soil elsewhere.  Maybe in the future I will share my un-handyman's trellis but this time I just want to show off the potted melon.  As shown in the first two photos, the melon plant has grown large and spreading all over.  The tall photo is a Photoshop composite of three photos.  I may not have properly merged the photos together, but you get the idea.  I just water it everyday and guide its vines so it won't end up in the neighbor's yard.   By the way, I actually used some of the compost, made mostly from last year's autumn leaves, in a pot to support the melon vines as they spread onto cement floor.

I have not read up much about growing melons and just play by ears, so to speak.  I know these things like to climb but never having grown them before I was amazed to see first-hand how the process is done.  The vines themselves have sticky hair to cling on whatever they come across.  Then there are these other things that crawl ahead and coil around poles and such for support.  I definitely need to read up on melons to know the proper terms.

In case you wonder what's with the title of the blog post, it is a variation of the phrase NO MELON NO LEMON, which spells the same from left to right and from right to left.  I love palindromes and cannot pass the chance of using them, but in this case since I grow melons, it is NO LEMON YES MELON.  Of course the phrase is not a palindrome any more.