Melons

Here is the first row of melons planted. I know, boring picture. I put it here for future comparison because if everything goes as planned, in a few weeks I should be posting a picture of an absolute jungle of vines loaded with melons. To the far left is the first row of tomatoes planted last week. The area in between will be filled in with sweet corn. As I move to the right of this first melon row, there will be more melons plus additional tomatoes and probably pumpkins and winter squash. Moving to the right goes toward the old, dead oak tree. I think it will look pretty cool if there are bright orange pumpkins in front of it. That might capture the perfect Halloween shot, but let's get back to melons.

This row has four watermelon varieties, plus Crenshaw, and Ambrosia melons. The watermelon varieties are Congo, Charleston Gray, Georgia Rattlesnake, and a seedless one called Ultra Cool. This is the first time I've seen seedless varieties available through retail stores. I bought these seeds at the local Lowes. Years ago when we were farming, we paid around fifty cents a plant for seedless watermelons. That adds up quick when you put a few acres in. I'm curious to see how this one turns out. Watermelons are something you have grow yourself to fully appreciate how good they are when everything is done right. Most of what you get from commercial channels are the product of many compromises. Most everyone knows how hard it is to tell if a watermelon is ripe. Some tap on it, some knock on it like knocking on a door, and some try to look at the ground spot to see if it is a straw yellow color. Countless newspaper articles try to explain how and why you do these things to up your chances of getting the perfectly ripe watermelon. Fact of the matter is none of it means much if you have inexperienced people picking the watermelons out in the field. The most reliable indicator is when the tendril closest to the stem on the melon is comletely dry. That is what we trained our crews to look for. If that condition was met, then they would look at the color of the ground spot and tap on it to see if it sounded hollow. The most important aspect was the dried tendril though. Unfortunately, you can't see that part when looking through stacks of watermelons at a market. Most of the commercial watermelons satisfy some criteria for probability of being ripe, but being able to watch the progress as they ripen is the best way to figure out when the perfect time is to pick a particular one. You can do that when you grow them yourself. Both of my kids have fond memories of when I grew watermelons commercially. We would plant ten to twenty acre blocks every two weeks until there were five or six staggered plantings. The method for determining when it was the best time to send a crew in to pick a field involved sampling hundreds of watermelons. We would walk a zig zag pattern through the field and cut melons with dried tendrils. We cut them in half lengthwise and sampled the very center, between the two rows of seeds. If the majority of the melons were fully ripe and the taste was very sweet, we would have a crew go through and pick the field the next day. I would have the kids help me with this because believe it or not, you can get tired of sampling watermelon. They had a blast for obvious reasons.

The Crenshaw were a favorite of my grandfather. I doubt he ever made any profit growing these though. He just liked them so he grew them every year. The main reason they could be hard to squeeze a profit out of is they have very thin skin. If the sun hits the melon too much, it sunburns it and make it unmarketable. Starting when the melons are still green, you have to scout the field every few days and any that are too exposed need to have straw placed over them for protection. This adds to the cost of production and coupled with the fact that this variety doesn't yield very well, it can be very hard to turn a profit on them. All of that doesn't take away from the fact that they are one of the best melons to eat. For those of you that can't grow them yourselves or are too far away to realistically talk me out of one, hit the farmers' markets this summer and get one. You won't be disappointed.

Ambrosia was the another melon I planted today. It is for all intents and purposes a cantaloupe. It's just a cantaloupe that is way better than the rest. It has never done well commercially because it's too fragile to ship any distance. It is very good when picked at full slip, which is when cantaloupes should be picked. This means the stem will easily slip away from the melon with minimal effort. That is when they are fully ripe on the vine. I think the melons planted today will all be great. The best melons are the ones that grow in the most warm weather possible. These will grow all during May, June, and July. During August, they will be kept without water so they ripen. This is the absolute best window to grow them. I will probably plant another row in a couple weeks, but that's just to keep the summertime theme going. This row is the "one".

Tomatoes....

The first round of tomatoes are planted. I say first round because I love tomatoes. Because of this, I'm sure I will plant more. This row has close to thirty plants though, so that is a lot of tomatoes. I do plan to to sun dry some the Romas, so I think I can keep up with how ever many they produce. Tomatoes are a big part of my meals, pretty much on a year round basis. Not sure why because I'm not Italian, even though some people think I am. I put them in salads, in pasta, and my favorite, chili con carne. Because of their high lycopene content, this means I will live well past a hundred. Great for me, sucks for those that wish I was dead already. Anyway, time to move on.

Tomatoes have a very personal place for me. Many people I have been close to have shared this passion for tomatoes and that has stuck with me. Some of these folks are not around any longer, but their passion stays with me. I am very lucky in that I had two father figures in my life. My father, Paul will always be my dad, no questions asked. I also had a step-father, Gary. Both helped me better understand the world way better than I could have hoped for on my own. I truly am blessed to have had this in my life. My aunt Liz was another that appreciated a good, vine ripe tomato.

Gary loved tomatoes. That is the best way to describe it. What ever source we had available to us, it didn't matter, fresh vine ripened tomatoes were the goal. He would get such enjoyment from discussing what varieties we were considering planting. His bottom line was to have access to them so he could determine which ones were the best tasting. He would plan meals around tomatoes. We spent countless hours talking about the "perfect tomato". What we came up with was it had to have a nice acidic bite, but balanced with enough sweetness to make you smile after biting into it. A tall order, but I think this project can deliver.

One variety I planted today was Pearson. It's an old variety and I planted it for my dad, he is gone now, but I'm sure he would approve. He remembered it to be very good tasting when he was younger. We talked about it in the context of of varieties that would sell well in our direct market operations. He used to handle that aspect of the farming operation for me and would tell me what customers were inquiring about. People would ask which varieties tasted "old fashioned", and Pearson is what he remembered from back when he was younger. It's great that we can still plant these older varieties.

Another variety planted today was driven by old memories. Lynda's dad, Jim planted many vegetables, tomatoes included. As I looked over the selections at Capital Nursery, one stood out from discussions we had many years ago. To honor that, I planted "Big Boy". Jim planted this when it first came out and it produced great tomatoes. I still remember all of the beautiful tomatoes those plants had that summer. It was a sight to see.

My aunt Liz, this rounds out the story on tomatoes. She would plan her vacation around coming to Sacramento at the right time to get plenty of tomatoes to take back to Arizona. This was very important to her because she liked them so much. She really just liked to visit and the tomatoes were the best reason of all to come out to our farm to pay such a visit. I guess it's not hard to figure out that tomatoes are something I will always grow, wherever I find myself.

The Herb Garden

This area will become the herb garden. It didn't start out this way, but this is how it will end up. This area is just on the other side of the early plantings of garlic, onions, broccoli, romanesco, and potatoes. By the way, no one has asked what romaneso is yet, so I will wait until questions are asked and explain later. It is a great vegetable steamed just like cauliflower. The original plan was to put sweet corn in here. The main reason was the tall stalks would give us a buffer from all the traffic coming down the highway. The north bound traffic sometimes seems like it's heading straight into the side of our house. When this old farm house was built, I don't think they ever could have imagined the volume of cars that travel this stretch daily. One of the many down sides to progress I guess. Since I wanted the corn to have a good eighteen inches of loose soil to establish its root system in, I dug an eighteen inch trench to start things off. This method is called the "Double Dig". You dig a trench and then turn the hard soil next to it, into the existing trench. The soil from the initial trench is moved by wheel barrow to fill in the depression on the opposite side from you started. The idea is that the soil profile is loosened down fairly deep to let deep rooted crops like sweet corn do well. After I had dug back a couple feet from the starting point, I found a pipe from the septic system about fourteen inches below the ground. Not wanting to disturb things that could potentially cause me or my landlord some serious grief, I made the decision to keep this area planted to shallower rooted crops. The plan will be to only loosen to a depth of ten or twelve inches and plant herbs. Herbs for the most part are not deep rooted so this should suit them fine.

One thing I will plant here will be basil. Basil to me is what summer is all about. A few of the smaller leaves sprinkled over fully ripened tomatoes with fresh mozzarella cheese and then drizzled with good olive oil is a treat. One trick to keeping basil around for those that don't have a garden is to clip the ends and put them in a small glass of water. Pretty much like you would keep flowers fresh on your table. Change the water every day or so and the basil sprigs will stay very fresh. Just pull off however many leaves you need for dinner that night. A great memory I have related to basil goes back over ten years ago, back when I was still farming. We were growing basil for a food processor that put basil leaves in with diced tomatoes. We grew the basil and pulled the leaves off and washed them. These washed, whole basil leaves were put in the cans of diced tomatoes right before the lids were fastened. The product was sold as "Italian Style" diced tomatoes. The whole project was a struggle to fine tune and my daughter, Jessica must have listened to me gripe about what a pain it was. She volunteered to go out and help strip leaves off of basil stalks the next day. I'll never forget her sitting there on top of a stack of boxes, patiently pulling every leaf from each stalk of basil and putting into the plastic tote. She was only seven years old but she was willing to work hard to make sure dad's business deal worked out. I'll never forget how focused she was and how important it was to her that this deal work. She was truly an inspiration to the crew I had working on this project.

Ground Work

It's amazing what a difference it makes when you have a access to a tractor. The transformation from weed patch to garden friendly took all of about three hours. I let Kevin Jr. pose on the tractor in exchange for bringing horses over later to ride around the garden. His friend Rachel has horses and lives about two football fields to the north. I rode "Sport" around the yard and then he and Rachel took off and rode over to where my old farm was. In the mean time, I went to work disking up the weed patch. As you can see, it's starting to look like I might be able to grow something here. I have to thank my friend that loaned me the tractor and disk. He is much like me in that he has to sit behind the desk most of the week. He keeps things real by planting a couple hundred acres of triticale and safflower though. It's funny how farming gets into your blood, no matter what you end up doing for a living, you always find a way to scratch the dirt and throw a few seeds out and wish for the best.

The Not So Main Site

These pictures show the other site for the project. As you can see in one of them, a few things have already been planted. So far, the crops planted are garlic, red and white onions, broccoli, romanesco, and yellow fin potatoes. The bootleg looking plastic fencing was to keep Roxie, the border collie, from cutting through. She is now trained to go around this area when she decides it's time to go over to the highway and herd the cars. She's pretty good at it and up to now, she's kept all the cars where they need to be, moving on down the road.

The other picture is an area I started clearing. It is not accessible to a tractor, so everything will be done manually. I raked and piled the weeds up last night until it got dark. Today I'll make Kevin Jr. and RJ haul them out of here. Instead of helping me last night, they spent their time patching holes in a boat because they think they can get it fixed up enough to go frogging. My belief is working on The Farmville Reality Project will pay bigger dividends than fixing up a boat to go frogging. Takes a bunch of frog's legs to make a meal. As I cleared this area without benefit of a tractor, I thought this is how my grandfather must have felt. He had to drop out of the eighth grade to help his father work the farm back around 1918. Five years later, in 1923, he was able to rent a few acres and start his own operation. Back then, all of the work was with animals or by hand. I don't think he was able to buy a tractor until the late thirties. Whenever I feel like complaining about doing some manual labor, I remind myself that there were people in my family that could have legitimately complained about working hard and never did. My grandfather was one such person. He passed away back in 1988, but my bet is he is keeping an eye on this project.

The Main Site

Here is a shot of the main site. As you can see, the winter grasses have died down from the first herbicide treatment. The green weeds starting to push upward are white top. I treated those a couple weeks ago but it only held them back. White top actually has some use in floral arrangments and years ago, we would see small crews with rental vans out in non-farmed fields cutting and bundling it up. They would sell it to florist shops in the area. Since food on my table is more important than a decorative floral arrangement, I plan to destroy every last one of them. They produce a lot of seeds and take over if you let them. Today we are going to have use of a tractor and disk to do the initial work. The ground is still fairly wet from the rain we had last weekend but once it is opened up, it will dry quickly.

This area is about thirty feet from the domestic well that services the house and has a 3/4" hose bibb available. Standard fittings from the local hardware store will get the irrigation system going. I haven't completely decided how I should water everything, but since we know starting with a 3/4" outlet, things can get behind quickly in a heat wave. I plan to run a good schedule this summer so I don't have to rename this the "Dust Bowl Project". I'll definately use drip lines on the tomatoes and peppers. I'm undecided on the melons. The best melons are grown with ample water early in the growing season and hardly any after the melons begin to ripen. The strategy is to water alot early on to encourage the roots down deep and then quit watering all together once the main set of melons are just about full sized. For that reason, I will likely use furrows to water between the rows and shoot for some good long soaks in late May and June. Of course this means I need to have the ground completely loosened up and the disk will only stir things down a few inches. My crystal ball tells me there is going to be some serious manual labor going on the next few days.

What This Project Is

I established a Facebook account in early 2010. The main reason initially was to reconnect with many old friends to see how they were doing. One thing I noticed right off the bat was a game called Farmville. It was somewhat amusing to see the updates about the various activities the players did while playing the game. Around the same time frame, my son and I rented a place with no shortage of weeds growing all around. It seemed only natural to turn a yard full of weeds into a garden that would hopefully produce some of the things I missed about not having a farm anymore. I now had enough room to plant things like sweet corn, melons, tomatoes and anything else I think of before it gets too late in the season. The Farmville game gave me the idea to post updates as progress was made getting the many different chores done to make this weed patch actually produce something.

I plan to take as many pictures as I can but I am not what you would call an avid photographer. I will keep up for the most part just because I want bragging rights for what I envision will be a very dramatic transformation of this yard. It looks like most of the yard was used in the past to park various types of small construction equipment, so there has been a great deal general clean up as the weeds die down. I had to spray these things twice with glyphosate (I'm staying away from referencing trade names).

One thing I think would be pretty cool is if this project can supply a majority of the food for a meal. I have two very hungry boys that hang around quite a bit, Kevin Jr. and RJ. They will also be the main farmworkers, as I plan on declaring myself the foreman. My lovely daughter Jessica also joins us for dinner every few days, so there are plenty of mouths to feed from this project. I guess if I get a few chickens and throw up a small coop, it would be possible to to do the whole meal from our little "farm". I'll need to think some more about the chickens though. I have always had a problem with "scope creep" whenever I jump into a project. Hopefully everyone enjoys following along with this and all of us might even learn something useful along the way.