Skip to main content

2016 mostly a failure

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.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Melons sown for 2021

20 buckets sown April 4, 2021. 9 seeds in each bucket. Seeds testes in 2018.
Post a Comment
Read more

Summer begins

By the first week of June, the soil has dried out, and no precipitation is in the weather forecast. Watering is mandatory, and the Israeli melons in the field require it daily, as do the raised beds. In my raised beds, several tomato plants have died because I wrongly assessed that they were getting adequate water. They were not. I've made this mistake before, but I did not learn from my past failures. I simply must stop overestimating how long a good rainfall as we had in the last weeks of may will last. Last year, I started pumpkins on July 4 for an October harvest. I did harvest a few pumpkins in October, but most were ready in the last week of October or the first of November. In order to harvest pumpkins this year in time for Halloween buyers, I must plant them by the first week in June.
Post a Comment
Read more