garden update

I guess someone has to hold down the blog around here while lf goes off on the Great Wedding Circuit of 2007. I thought my measly 3 weddings in two months last year was a big deal, but I didn't also attend multiple bridal showers, bachelorette parties and destination weddings while working as a server for a catering company at still other weddings.

Over in this part of the universe, I have been reading books, books and more books, and taking breaks to water plants, plants and more plants. Here's how things looked at the garden tonight. (Also imagine a cute little girl, daughter of a neighboring plot, who likes to walk by and jump up and down next to my plot.)

Sometime awhile ago, I bought a "Korean melon." What genius decided to name this one for American consumers? It's possibly less helpful than "Chinese broccoli." Extensive internet research (aka one google search) suggests that alternate names for this melon is "dua gan," "golden liner" or "yellow melon." Oh well. I started this seed at least a couple of months ago, but it only really took off growing in the past couple of weeks. It's growing on a trellis because I have limited space and melons like to take over as much surface area as possible. I kind of like twining the little tendrils around the bamboo poles. I am less amused at my neighbor's melon plant that wants to take over and grow into my plot.



There have been a couple other tiny melons growing on the vine, but this one has taken off and surpassed its siblings, one of whom has turned yellow and shriveled up. It looks big in the picture, but probably is less than 2" in diameter.

This year, I tried to start tomato seeds. I'm definitely going to have to work on my technique because this is the most successful tomato plant that I started from seed. It was severely stunted and appears to have some sort of disease. In this photo, it still has two tiny tomatoes developing on the vine, even though the top has completely turned brown and stopped growing. A couple days later, some rodent decided to take a bite out of one of the tomatoes and cast it aside on the dirt in disdain. The other tomato was never seen again. Sort of disgusted, I pulled up the now-fruitless plant. The root system was tiny. No wonder the plant was sad.

I've been kind of obsessed with quinoa lately and so I decided to try to grow it. The edible portion is the seed and it sprouted pretty easily. Here is the one plant that made it. The buds have been on this plant forever. I wish they would mature, so I can make my massive harvest of 2 tablespoons of quinoa already!





This is one of my neighbor's sunflower plants. He planted them a little too close to the edge of his plot, so I got pretty adept at turning while I walked the path of my plot to avoid getting hit in the face or arms with the prickly, large sunflower leaves. This also required leaning forward so that they plant could hit me against the back and not the neck or head. Usually, it's only me in the plot because of space issues-- there's a 1'x10' path and that's about it. Once, someone else entered the plot (not exactly invited), so I didn't have a change to warn him about the prickly sunflowers, so he proceeded to whine multiple times about how they hurt. Oops.

The plants were pretty attractive until about mid-summer, when they finished blooming. One day, I arrived at my plot to see sunflower seeds all over the dirt, one of the plants broken and drooping, with all the petals and half of the seeds gnawed off. Ew.

I got this coleus so I could make an arrangement in a planter. It turned out that the plants I bought were way too big, so I ended up taking cuttings to root and then put in the planter. Unconvinced that I wanted to put the parent plants in the ground, I kept this "kiwi" coleus in a pot, but on top of the dirt. The other coleus plant grew roots into the ground through the drainage holes, so now I don't want to move it. This one just started to look more and more sad. Note the orange foliage. It used to be red-purple outlined in yellow and green.

I lifted up the pot to find these roots trying to make an escape from the pot. Somehow, they didn't manage to grow into the dirt, so I guess they are just kind of hanging out. Roots are not exactly supposed to just hang out. I haven't figured out where it should go yet, but I think this kind of growing effort (probably larger than the entire root system of the aforementioned pathetic tomato) probably deserves something.