Golden Midget Watermelon

My golden midget watermelon is growing and putting out flowers. I managed to pollinate a female flower earlier this week and it was starting to point down and form a melon. But it yellowed and died. Just wasn't meant to be. I would like to see the plant grow a little faster. It needs more vine to get up into more sunlight. 

But I'm not convinced this plant will last the entire season. Some of the lower leaves are yellowing and this is very slowly starting to spread. And the plant has been like this since before I transplanted it. If it were just the leaves and perhaps a lack of new growth, I'd assume some kind of nutrient problem. But I've also noticed the vine is turning yellow too and there should have been a good balance of nutrients in the potting soil when I planted it.

Something eating my basil

I've been finding basil leaves that look like they've been nibbled on. A worm perhaps or an earwig. I'll have to go out some night with a flashlight and take a closer look. Only a few leaves though and they've been like this for a while now. A couple of weeks ago it was celery. One of my plants had all of its new growth eaten to a nub. I suspect a worm of some sort in that case. It was just the one plant and after I discovered it new growth returned to the plant and I haven't seen any damage to the celery since.

Vacation Watering

My garden is off to a slower, less enthusiastic start this year. I decided not to plant so much as I plan to be away from home a bit more this summer. I just don't have the time to properly take care of my plants. And this past week was the first of my summer challenges: keeping my plants watered for a week with no one at home. In the past I've had someone take care of things for me but this time I decided to find a way to do it without asking for help. I figured that if my plants are still relatively young and planted in self watering containers they might be able to survive that long without needing a watering.

But for the plants not in self watering containers I needed to find an automatic solution. I purchased a Claber Oasis self watering system. It's nothing more than a tub with a timer controlling the opening and closing of a small value. When open, water can flow from the tub through flexible tubing to drippers over the soil in your containers. Only problem is, relying on gravity, it needs to be higher then your plants. And some of my plants are in a planter box at table height.

I added a shelf to the side of my highest planter and placed the Claber there. I pushed all of the containers towards the back of the balcony where they get less sun, clustered around the Claber. And I fed the water lines in a loop over the containers, with a few drippers per container. I even placed drippers over my self watering containers. Then I covered the tops of all the containers with white plastic to prevent the soil from drying out too quickly.  The timer on the drip system was set to go off twice a day and deliver 4oz per dripper per watering session.

When I came home after a week, I was happy to see everything still alive and growing. Only problem I had was with the drippers higher up, closer to the tub. To work properly, the drippers have to be a couple of feet below the water reservoir. The drippers didn't drip as much. Some of them I had modified to drip faster and these did all right. But some providing water to a couple of pepper plants could have been working better.

Hardening Off

Happy Mothers Day!

Not a very big selection this year: four black cherry tomato plants, three California wonder peppers and two Hungarian hot wax peppers. Not sure if I'll plant all of them. I also have some golden midget and sugarbaby watermelons inside along with a dozen basil and celery plants.

I've been putting these out to harden off for the past few days now. Weather has been nice but the winds have been blowing strong making it hard to keep the little plants out there for too long. I think I'll be planting these soon - no later than the end of the week. Have to get the balcony cleaned up too. And I need to buy more potting soil, fertilizer and compost. It's going to be a busy week.

Lighting

I wanted to get some extra lighting over some of my seedlings so I picked up this 22" HO fluorescent growlight at Lee Valley. I was going to construct some kind of stand for it from some scraps of wood but I didn't really feel like putting even that kind of commitment into it (yeah, I'm lazy). My kids have this K'NEX toy set that they rarely use so I quickly put together this little frame to temporarily hold the light above one of my starter trays.

I have another tray and I could use more light but this is good enough. And this was a week ago. The plants in the other tray; tomatoes and pepeprs, have been potted up to individual 3 inch pots now.

Like every season, I'm running behind in my planting. I did good with the tomatoes but the peppers could have been seeded earlier. And the celery is way off. Far too late, but I'll try anyways. Basil is on schedule. And I keep forgetting to start the melons. Maybe tomorrow...