Slow coming.
But my daughter and I found our first teeny-weeny little Sugar Baby watermelon while weeding today.
I think it will start producing goodies in about 2 weeks.
Can't wait for tomatoes to start the annual AP tomato diet
I started another raised bed this season and inaugurated it with squash, zucchini, watermelon, and roma tomatoes. The plants look healthy enough and with plenty of blooms, but they start to bear little fruit and then each one dies. It has me scratching my head.
Has it been hot there? If not, the soil needs something, maybe calcium (at least for the maters).
The cucumbers in the greenhouse are doing great, as are the peppers (after a rocky start).
Yay!!!
The asparagus is a real mystery to me. I studied cultivation on the 'net until I was reasonably sure I wouldn't kill 'en outright. I planted them according to best practices. I built up the bed for them exactly as described. And waited. and watched. And waited some more.
Finally one meager sickly little stalk crept up out of the ground. I watched for days but there was only the one. It grew about 8-10" tall and then seemed to stop. Several weeks went by without any discernible activity.
Then one afternoon after work I went out to water and there were six more stalks poking up out of the dirt (I had planted 8). In very short order they grew to around 30" tall and fanned out with spindly stalks. They now look like they are thriving and may even grow stout enough to survive the winter.
Woohoo!
I sure wish I knew WTH I was doing.
Yah. Join the crowd.
I'm always on the 'net looking for best practices and solutions and when I go to the store, I pick brains. Some of the 'maters got blossom-end-rot again this year -- not enough calcium -- and the older gentleman at Ace Hardware pointed out a spray-on that the plant takes up faster than when watering the base. So, we got the lime AND the spray and staggered the application, with the spray first. It worked.
We have learned that too much nitrogen in fertilizer will grow nice, lush leaves and no fruit. Each plant requires something in addition to, in greater ratios. I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know, though.
Oh, and one other thing; it does make a difference where you get your plants. Every previous year, we got ours at Lowes/Home Depot and nothing did very well (it could have been our learning curve, too); this year we went to a well-known and reputable gardening center for our plants and they have done immensely better (again, maybe it's the learning curve because every year we say, "okay, next year we have to remember to do THIS first ...).
Now, it's the damn tree rats. They like the "perfect" tomato, so we have to pick 'em before they're fully ripe or the squirrels will sample them.