Gardening

Back in April, I planted a garden for the first time since I've been in the house. I already have two orange trees and a lemon, and last year planted a cherry, an Asian pear and a guava. The guava didn't do well during the winter, but it's coming back nicely. I need to remember to cover it next winter.

Anyway, in April I planted watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, strawberries and corn. Today I harvested my first batch of corn -- ten ears. I boiled up one, and it was good. Small, but good. And small is the point of this post.

My ears of corn are considerably smaller than the corn bought in stores. The kernels are smaller as well. And it's not just the corn. A couple weeks ago, one of the watermelons split open. I brought it inside, but away the exposed portion of the meat, and ate it. It was very good. And today I noticed one of the cantaloupes was ripe (i.e. the rind had turned yellow). I picked it and, like the watermelon, it was good.

But they were all small. The watermelon was about the size of a softball. The cantaloupe, the size of a baseball. And the corn are anywhere from 6-8 inches.

I don't know if it's something I did wrong, or whether the large corn and melons in the store are the result of selective breeding. I'm going to have to chat with the folks at the nursery to find out. Maybe I didn't put down enough fertilizer, or feed them enough during the growing season. Dunno, it's the first time I've grown anything on purpose.

The orange trees are littered with fruit during January and February. They're orange in December, but are too tart to eat. They seem to need the rain to sweeten. This year, since we didn't have much rain, they didn't grow very large, and were all small. This winter, I plan on watering them regularly if there's no rain.

The melons and corn I have to water daily, it's been so hot. The strawberries and lemon, as well. The lemon tree is potted, and has about eight unripe lemons on it at the moment. The strawberries seem to give one fruit every few days, which is a little disappointing. There are three pears on the tree right now, all immature. I can't wait 'til they're ready for harvesting. I wonder if their growth'll be stunted as well.

Today I noticed a pumpkin. It's about the size of a grapefruit, and is still green. I looked around and saw several others, all fairly small, the largest maybe the size of an apricot. Good to see they're finally starting to grow.

Oh, I forgot to mention the apple tree. I don't know what kind of apple it is, but it's never borne fruit larger than about an inch across. Oh, and in the front yard are grapes. Unfortunately there were only three bunches of grapes this year (none last year), and it would appear as though some animal got to them. I went outside one morning and all the grapes were gone.

When I planted the garden, I also put a bunch of praying mantises out there to keep down the bugs. There only seem to be a few left, where I put down dozens. (I'd picked up a couple of egg sacs from OSH. Only one hatched.) The largest mantis I've seen recently is just under two inches in length. Supposedly they'll reach six inches. It's funny when I'm out there watering the watermelons, it sits on one of the leaves and watches me. I put my hand near him last week, end he crawled up onto my finger and stared at me. Funny little critters.