Wet gardening experiment.

12 years ago

I enjoy experimenting with about anything I do, gardening being just one of those things.
A few years ago I started what I called "My Experimental Garden" to test old hay for herbicide. I got all my questionable tested and the past three years I have been using that bed as a wet growing area test. Last year I grew pumpkins in that bed and they did very well. The year before I grew watermelons. This year I tried cantaloupes and they have not worked too well because we have had a more rainy year and the cantaloupes are splitting. I plan to adjust my plant practices and plant okra, pole beans or peppers in the wetter areas..

I will try to show what I am faced with. and also show that you can get produce, but chose you plants wisely because mother nature will not straighten out your mistakes.

I harvester 17 cantaloupes this morning, many were starting to split because of too much rain.

Larry

The cantaloupe bed is the one next to the white work table.

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Comments (3)

chickencoupe
12 years ago
With all that water it's really impressive.
slowpoke_gardener
Original Author
12 years ago
Bon, the picture with all the water was taken on 6-26, but I have had a much wetter year than normal. We had some rain today, had 1.25" yesterday. I picked another 13 cantaloupes this after noon. The rain has all but ruined them. I expect the taste of my watermelons will suffer also.
The watermelons are planted on the highest area of my lawn. I checked my watermelons this afternoon, found none split, but I know they wont taste as sweet after the rain we received. We are still better off with the rain because the lawns and pastures are holding up well.
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
12 years ago
Larry, That's a great melon crop. It is unfortunate the rain is falling so well just when they are ripening. Too bad the rain couldn't have waited another couple of weeks so your melons wouldn't split and wouldn't have watered-down flavor.

That heavy rain last week hasn't caused any of our melons to split (knock on wood) yet, and so far, only 1 watermelon has had a watered-down flavor. I expect we'll have more with watered-down flavor later on, but I don't care----we desperately needed that rain no matter what it cost us in terms of splitting tomatoes and melons.

Our lawns and pastures look as green right now as they ever have in August, but the soil moisture is dropping rapidly so we need some more good rainfall soon or it won't stay green for long.

My poor old dry garden doesn't even know what "wet" means, but for a few days last week it did have some wetness, however brief. It has been shocking to see how quickly the soil dried up after that last really heavy rainfall.

Dawn