McKinney Garden - West TN

[applestar]

Looking good! You are right about the watermelon and squash vines. I have to keep re-directing the watermelons every day, and one of my squash vines escaped between the fence. I'll post a picture in my thread later.

You might want to think about mulching those bare soil areas though.

To my eyes, they look naked. haha.

Until the drought and heat stopped them from growing, I was using cut grass. Now mostly pulled weeds, though I have areas that I still need to catch up on cutting. Larger areas get papered first.

[McKinney88]

Most of my tomatoes have been doing this:



Found two of these hiding in my corn yesterday!



A lot of these spaghetti squash are growing too.



I cut one open but its not ready yet.



Some cantaloupes:



and some okra:

[applestar]

Spaghetti squash will turn yellow and hard shelled when mature -- finger nail won't dent it. But I've heard you can eat them young like summer squash. That one looks like you could have -- the seeds still look immature and soft.

Those stress cracks in the tomatoes are from too much water. You can avoid them to some extent by picking them at first blush, before the skin colors deeper and gets too thin/soft.
Once they color break and blush, nutrient transport into the fruit is cut off and it's mostly just water bring supplied by the plant, so it will still ripen with good/full flavor.

People have different methods for keeping the blushed tomatoes until they ripen. I place the hard ones in baskets, etc so there is good air circulation, and in towel lined baskets after they soften to avoid bruising.

[McKinney88]

I was wondering if water does that. We keep greeting these monsoon downpours here and everything is staying wet a lot. It's been getting better lately.

[McKinney88]

Good pick today. Super excited for my first legit mammoth sunflower head ever lol. Corn is almost ready too. Found a couple good ears.



My other sunflowers are getting really tall lol. That's me and I'm 5'10".

[applestar]

Great!

Which way does the fence run?
Trouble with sunflowers is that they follow the sun as they grow, always facing their flower buds to face the sun, and when the flower finally opens, it typically stops following the sun at the point when the first rays of the sun first greeted the newly opened flower.

In my garden, I've tried growing sunflowers all over among the limited areas with appropriate sunflower growing conditions, and so far every time, the sunflowers opened facing AWAY from our house. I'm hoping this year, I have finally found a fence row that would cause them to face US instead of the neighbors.

[McKinney88]

The fence runs east and west.

[McKinney88]

Sunflowers are about 10ft now. Ended up with 3 dozen ears of corn and it was delicious! I will be planting a big crop of that next year at the community garden. My tomato plants I started have done wonderful so far! They all have tomatoes on them now and are all healthy looking. Only one has a little bit of that leaf roll stuff. I pulled up all the crookneck squash plants because the squash on them had no neck and was white. I just pulled up my spaghetti squash plants but I have 4 big squash I took inside to finish ripening. I still have 3 watermelon growing, not sure which ones they are. I think they are they sangria because they are more oblong than round. I have 3 good size cantaloupes growing and one is almost ready and a saw a couple more baby ones yesterday.

I had planted some Empress beans where the corn was but only half of it came up because I got the rows too deep I think. I re-planted the spots last night. I also planted another patch of cucumbers and summer squash and they have sprouted. Okra is doing great too. I get around 10 pods a week and my wife and parents love it.

[McKinney88]

Bought one of those soil test kits. Here is the results:

[McKinney88]

Sunflower pic:



Heads I picked yesterday:



Picked some cantaloupe and watermelon yesterday.





Also using baby food jars to store seed: