Last year, I toiled over my watermelons. I started out with about 14 ripe ones, so I had room for error. It took me all summer long to gain the knowledge needed to pluck a truly ripe watermelon from my patch. (Answer: you look for the vines coming out of the fruit to fade and turn brown.)

This year, I assumed these same methods would be true for my muskmelons. A good friend gave me some organic seeds, and they instantly blossomed, producing a great harvest of 10 Eden’s Gem melons. Since I impatiently plucked so many of my watermelons prematurely last year, I was determined to wait for the vines to turn brown around my muskmelons before picking them.

Boy was I wrong again!

I take a daily tour around my garden. That’s the only way to keep up with weeds and zucchini. That’s also when I check in on my other budding veggies. During my last few spins around the raised beds, my sniffer has picked up on the delightful scent of fresh muskmelon. Yet, when I inspected the vines, they were always bright green, looking new and fresh. This was not at all like the browning vines on last year’s ripe watermelon. I dismissed the number one cook’s tool (my nose), and went about my other plant inspections.

This morning as I toured my garden, the smell of delicious melon was even stronger. It was as if someone had just opened a ripe melon on my kitchen counter. My nose must be right! This time, I decided to inspect the underside of my melons in case one had turned rotten. Sure enough, as soon as I lifted my melon ever so gingerly, SNAP!, off it came. On the underside I found a nearly over-ripe bruise. In fact, nearly all the melons’ skins looked nearly translucent. Instead of the soft green skins, I noticed a lot of orange peaking through. And the glorious smell! There was no denying they were ripe.

Now, instead of throwing out under-ripe melons as I did with my watermelon last year, I will be gorging myself rapidly on juicy, bursting muskmelons as fast as I can eat them. This is a task I am well suited to pursue!

Note to self: next year, as soon as these melons’ skin turns from pale green to light orange, it’s picking time!

Labels: eden's gem melon, honeydew melon, melon ripeness, muskmelon, organic seeds, seeds, watermelon

My friend just asked me, “Amber, do you do anything small?”

I believe I responded, “Yeah, I get a little obsessed.”

And I do. Let’s take my seed love for example. This winter, feeling blah from the cold and grey, I turned to the pages of the Seed Savers catalog. Filled with all sorts of summer promise, the pages called to me. I read that publication from cover-to-cover as my husband watched on in amazement. After reading aloud three descriptions of eggplants to him, he gave up and walked away. They all sounded the same to him. But to me, each one offered a nuance that I wished to experience.

Choosing seeds was hard enough. When they arrived, planting them seemed the easy part. Of course, every seed packet recommended you plant two or three seeds in case a few of them never sprouted. I carefully followed the instructions, set my many trays of seeds in nearly every available window of my house, and misted them gently with water from a spray bottle every day. My morning routine now had one more critical component.

When each tiny seed began to sprout, I experienced the joy of a child seeing her first kitten. I would squeal with delight, clap my hands, and run to find my husband to share the news. If he was at work, I would call him, sometimes five times a day, with updates. At breakfast time, the purple bell peppers might have yielded one new sprout. By lunchtime, a tomato and three cucumbers might have joined them. Each sighting felt as rare as spotting a bald eagle in the forest. Joy and elation can hardly express it.

As my seedlings grew, I realized the folly of my ways. Not only did I plant two or three seeds in each tiny container, but I planted at least nine containers for each type of plant. When it was all said and done, and every last seedling had sprouted, I was the proud parent of about 200 vegetable plants! And as a beaming mother, I could not yank a single species from its roots and let it die.

Thus, as winter turned to spring and I anxiously awaited my garden soil warming, I spent weekends outside repotting my tiny seedlings into somewhat larger peat pots, carefully labeling each one with a marker. Before I realized, I was hauling card tables in from the garage, plopping them in front of windows and covering every spare inch with seedlings. Instead of taking me a few minutes to mist them all in the morning, it now took about 20 minutes. As my summer dreams (plotted out in winter) stretched higher and higher, my life became intertwined with my plants.

I began my plea to friends, offering up free plants. I must have filled two dozen six-packs with nature’s bounty (great transporting containers for tiny pots!). Friends new and old made the trek to my house. With each visit, I thought my crop would surely be depleted. Yet, with each guest’s departure, my tables full of seedlings looked as crowded as ever. Dozens of gardens in town must now bear my vegetables, but I still have dozens left. I have planted my own garden, packing each veggie as close together as I dare. Yet, my bounty still overcrowds me.

My garden beds now full, I have started filling terra cotta pots on the back porch. Perhaps some peppers will sprout from there? I simply cannot bear to walk away and let them droop and shrivel.

Next year, I think I’ll plant only what I need. Then again, my husband will probably have to make me re-read this come winter. I’m sure I’ll be seed-crazy again by then!

Labels: garden, peat pot, planting, Seed Savers Exchange, seedling, seeds, vegetables

Oh dear! Where will I begin? My seed catalog has arrived from the Seed Savers Exchange. It’s better than strolling the grocery aisles on an empty stomach. It’s cold outside, but inside my catalog, it’s summer already. And the promise of that summer is overflowing with a bounty of colors and foods that is toying with my imagination and my hunger.

I want to buy them all!

Yet, our garden has limits. The hubby and I have already begun to make plans for watermelon growing between camellia trees in the side yard, or a zucchini plant tucked into the front landscape. After all, once you browse a seed catalog, there’s no turning back. Those measly offerings in the local nursery—with their 20 or 30 crops to choose from—suddenly pale as I discover a chocolate bell pepper with a brick red center, a “sunberry” whose flavor rivals a blueberry (and is twice the size), a tomato the color of sunshine, and a banana tree you can grow in your house.

How can I choose just one or two varieties? After all, I must stick to some staples: red bell peppers, purple eggplants, pesto basil. But what about the green eggplants? Or the purple potatoes from Peru? The varieties are endless, and my curiosity too deep.

My itch for spring grows. There are still sad leaves of spinach clinging to life in my winter garden and baggies of frozen peppers from last year’s harvest in the freezer, but already I long for those new summer veggies, hanging enticingly from the vine!

Labels: banana tree, catalog, chocolate bell pepper, eggplant, garden, heirloom tomato, Seed Savers Exchange, seeds, summer, sunberry, vegetables