Sustainable Farm Journal

Despite the fact that the melon crop this year was almost an entire loss because of the rain that came in late August and didn't stop for two weeks, I was still able to harvest a dozen sugar pie pumpkins. These 12 pumpkins came from four or five plants only. I started them as transplants in late May when ongoing spring rains showed no signs of letting up. I planted sugar pie and Howden pumpkins but the Jack O'Lantern pumpkins only produced two fruits that were taken by rot and insects. I planted the transplants in mid June into a hydroponic Dutch bucket system where they grew for 3 months until the pumpkins were ready to pick and cure.

Despite my thorough preparation the growing season of 2016 and my optimism which led me to expand the amount of coverage I gave to Israeli melons, heavy rains in the last two weeks of August have destroyed my harvest. I've never seen this much rain in the summer before and I had no way to imagine two weeks ago when my melons first begin to ripen that they would now be rotting in the field with as much as 2 inches of flood water surrounding them. In the last several days I've harvested 10, 15, or 20 each day only to throw all but maybe one or two out in the field because they had split open and begun to rot.

The first row of Israeli melons that I planted before the last rain had shown no signs of germination by today, so I reseeded 3 seeds into each basin. I used the seed I saved from the best melons from last year because I was afraid that the Willhite seed was too old (from 2012). I was almost finished reseeding the basins when I dug one up, just to check the seed. When I did, I found that the seeds had taproots and were indeed germinating.

Today, I planted 18 basins of Israeli melons, old original. I sprinkled Agronomic Partners IQ Amimo-N into each basin and planted about 8 seeds from a 2012 bag. I will plant another 18 to 36 basins in the next few weeks. Additionally. I will install 20 bato buckets of melons started in February and March (10 from each month) to determine if I can hasten a harvest by starting melons early and growing them hydroponically.

Bato buckets of melon starts. Today, I sowed Israeli melons in 10 more Bato buckets. Unlike my previous starts in Oasis cubes, I directly sowed the seed into the medium in the buckets. The medium is composed of about half and half perlite and coconut coir. I've placed the buckets in the greenhouse to keep them warm, as nights are still chilly in the 50s. In the greenhouse, lows stay in the upper 60s, so the melons should germinate faster. If the starts are successful, then I should harvest melons from these buckets about two weeks earlier than melons sown directly in the field at the first of April. As for the melons started in February, they're growing slowly after having dehydrated. I was unaware of how dry perlite can be, and when I transplanted the seedlings into the perlite, I did not water the buckets thoroughly enough. They are recovering, but I think I've lost some of their potential advantage. Melons started in early February in Oasis cubes, transpl...