Big melons

Ok, I *must* do a minor garden update right this minute. Because if I wait much longer, the photos I've taken will be totally outdated. And I can't keep going out every friggen day to photograph the garden because it brings my crazy right out into the light for everyone to see, which is a practice I am trying to limit.

So, for the moment, running, crafting, bitching about everything under the sun - all on hold.

See, the vegetables, they've gone right off the rails. They get bigger when I blink and it makes me uncomfortable.

The pumpkins have, well, gone from pumpkin to pumpkinS. I planted one, count 'em ONE, pumpkin seed this year. In a tiny pot salvaged from my sister's wedding favors, which then sat ignored on the sideboard in my kitchen and barely got watered. Until one day when I tore my focus away from the Nutella long enough to catch a glimpse of some big leaves flopping around over there and realized that, shit, some of the seeds actually germinated.

Hey! Look at that! Plants that learn to tend to themselves. Perfect.

Out of the six seeds I planted in the tiny pots, all but one germinated (can't remember who was the loser, here) and I planted them all in the garden.

There, all but one (Big max pumpkin - rock on, Biggie!) was then mowed by bastard bugs. And now I see why. This pumpkin seed is not of this world. I am certain it was sent from another universe where plants survive on little other than neglect and open space.

Basically, the plant, which I didn't technically have room for, has taken over the bed it shares with the cantaloupe, strawberries, random garlic and chives. When I originally tottered out to the garden with this tiny being - only two leaves in all (albeit large ones) - I didn't really have a place to put it. So I just jammed it into the bed next to the future lush Asian pear site (read: current ugly dirt yard) thinking that I could "train" it to grow over there, where it wouldn't bother the other plants.

Nice thinking, retard.

There is no "training" a pumpkin plant. Especially not this one. Its still holding a grudge from the month or so I forced it to live a near solitary and water-free lifestyle on the kitchen sideboard. It's taken its latent frustration out on all the plants in the bed and is threatening to move to the neighbor's yard and tell them exactly what kind of gardening asshole I really am.

Here it is shoving the strawberries around:


Here it is entirely covering the cantaloupe plants and forcing the cosmos to stretch for daylight:

And here is a photo so impressively out of date that the pumpkin featured here has actually doubled in size and taken on a more authentic orange shade. Plus it has about five friends of varying size that all promise to be carnival sideshows.

We're going to have to move.

See, I did a little science experiment at the end of last season.

I was so destroyed over the utter failure of last year's vegetable crop that I gave up, bought a soil test kit, and sat out in the vegetable beds under the broiling hot sun to take soil readings and let my neighbors laugh at me. And then, as a shock to myself and others who know me well, I did NOT just forget the test kit and it's interesting findings in the potting bench drawer and leave this season's veg. crop "up to the gods" like I normally would. I actually (brace thyself) rustled up the necessary amendments, DID THE MATH (who is this madwoman?) and carefully amended the soil as instructed.

I don't even recognize me in this scenario.

Now I can say: "Laugh at this, neighbors with small melons!"

My plants are huge. There is no crispy crunchy death show happening this season. Oh no. This season is all about big ass plants with big ass fruits and, well, big melons.


At current count we have 6+ pumpkins on the vine (one of which going beyond volleyball size), 4+ cantaloupe, one million tomatoes, half a million lemon cucumbers, uncontrollable lettuce, some hidden basil, chives, beans and parsley and a batch of nasturtium making good on it's threat to "mound and takeover".

I'm not saying I'll take go back on my "I was told there would be no math" mantra, but I *may* reconsider my stance on science.

Lesson learned: Soil testing is not retarded. Also, companion gardening appears to work.