Mama Kat Thursday: Fruit of the Vine

The Mama Kat blog prompt topic for today is, 

"Share the fruits of your labor from your garden this year."

My garden isn't new, though it was newly walled in with a couple rows of castle wall block this year. That certainly helped keep the melon vines in and the Box Turtles out.

(Box Turtles will enjoy your ripe melons before you will, if you didn't know.)

My garden patch has been taken over by melon vines. The sudden change from humid summer to dry fall weather has given all the melon vines a second wind and has spurred fresh growth.
Water them with a little Epsom Salts didn't hurt either.

(The potassium in Epsom Salts helps them fruit.)

The pictures below were both taken today:

First Picture: A ripening Canary type "Amy" Melon.
I should be able to harvest it sometime later this weekend. I'm working on a Honeydew we bought right now.
The white dust is Sevin dust. It's there to keep Cucumber beetles away. Nasty buggers bore into the fruit.

The leaves of spring growth are looking pretty ragged, but you can see the yellow bloom of some new growth in the lower corner.

Second Picture: A brand new melon on a new spur of fresh vine growth:

I just discovered it before I took the photo.  It's now seated on an upside down cat food can to keep it off the ground, sprayed with Neem Oil and dusted with Sevin. It won't get cold here until late October--even November, so plenty of time for a few new melons.

I was disappointed to find another 1-inch melon that had just started forming already been bored into and had to discard it.

The leaf damage is from grasshoppers. At least they don't care about the melons.

Make no mistake. Enjoying the fruits of you gardening labor isn't easy. The competition out there is tough. 

Third Picture: Some really huge Sweet Basil:

It's about 30 inches tall and got so because that container is full of really nice Miracle-Gro Garden Soil. Normally it stays about 12 to 18 inches.
These basil were all volunteer seedlings. The stuff will self-seed wildly. For that to happen, though, you have to let it go to bloom at the end of the season.

Basil is a great patio container crop. Good bee attracter if you let it bloom. Not bothered by much, though can see some leaf damage here---pesky grasshoppers again. They'll eat anything.

But I don't put any sort of insecticide on herbs because I plan on harvesting them for drying.

So what's your favorite thing to grow? Flowers? Herbs? Veggies?

Thanks for visiting!

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