Planted on March 16th, photo on June 10th

Sure these babies are surrounded by some brown/dead leaves (caused by spider mites in April), but…holy tomatoes! I’m getting excited about eating these things with some pasta and wine. Yum-dum-a-doodles!

Since melons “travel” quite a ways when they grow, I decided to give them a trellis and grow them vertically. Once the fruit start gaining some weight, I plan on fixing them to the trellis with something like pantyhose that will expand with the melon and keep it from falling off the vine under it’s own weight. After doing a bit of research in homesteading books and whatnot, I chose to construct a sawhorse style trellis. It’s strong and was easy to build. Here is what I did…

These metal sawhorse hinges/joints can be bought at yr local big box store for about $7

First, I must apologize for my hair. Please do not pay attention to my physical appearance in this blog or you will lose focus.

Second, I bought a metal sawhorse hinge and a few 8′ pieces of 2x4s from a crappy big box store. I cut four  3′ ‘legs’ and one 5′ section for the top.

Wire was rolled out 56 inches long and secured to each side of the sawhorse.

Next I took some leftover fencing I had laying around and attached it to the legs of the sawhorse. I made the sawhorse 56″ as to overlap my 4′ box by 4″ on each side. This allowed me to place the trellis over the garden box without the legs sitting in the soil.

Finished trellis on top of Hale's Best Cantaloupe (left) and Charleston Grey Watermelon (right)

The final step was attaching the center/top 2×4 to the two sawhorse hinges and placing the finished trellis over the garden box.

One week after adding the trellis, the melons are attaching themselves with their cool tendrils

I took the above photo today, one week after building the trellis. Check out all the blossoms! I saw many bees doing their dirty pollinating on these suckers this morning…melons coming soon!

Red Malabar Spinach from Kitazawa Seed Co.

I was initially pretty excited about this Red Malabar Spinach, which is one of the few “greens” that can take the summer heat in Central Texas. I changed my mind, however, after hearing numerous reports of the spinach being “mucous-like” in texture and not very tasty either. I’ve heard that this plant is best used in fish-based soups, as found in Asian cuisine. At any rate, instead of cutting the spinach down – I replanted it in the corner of our yard for ornamental purposes…it is a vining plant that can reach 14 feet tall. Today is the first day I’ve noticed the spinach clinging to the bamboo stake.

The seeds for this plant came from Kitazawa, who certainly have the best packaging of any seed company in my humble opinion.

Caterpillars chowing down at the top of a 3 1/2 foot tall fennel plant.

I blogged about these guys yesterday and continue to be fascinated with them. Today, all eleven of the caterpillars remain on the fennel plant – and all have increased in size by at least a third. There is also very little left of the foliage on the fennel. I’m cool with that – we planted them for these crawling creatures to utilize.

Planted 3/16, picked 6/10

I love growing hot peppers. These Banana Supremes are great for pickling and such. Yum-dum-a-doodle!

What is this? Please identify...

Who doesn’t like butterflies? I can’t think of any rational person who doesn’t think they are pretty dang awesome.

In an attempt to attract more butterflies to our backyard, we planted a few butterfly attracting plants. There are both “host” plants, which are where eggs are laid and caterpillars feed and “nectar” plants – which adult butterflies feed from.  This picture is of a caterpillar going wacky on our Fennel (“host”) in the herb garden. I counted no less than eleven of those suckers on the plant this morning, so…unless the birds feast on them we are going to have some butterfly magic soon.

We could use some help identifying exactly what kind of butterfly these guys are going to morph into…any help is appreciated.

Nantes Coreless Carrots planted January 31 and harvested May 29. We probably could have pulled these a few weeks ago, but we weren’t sure. How do you tell when carrots are ready?

Nantes Coreless Carrots

Welcome to Planted and Enchanted, a little blog to help us document our attempt at  gardening and sustainable living. It’s all about experimenting, learning, and having fun.