The Year of No Harvest

Okay, I admit that I let my husband plant enough corn seed in a 10x5-foot plot to plant an entire acre, and that's why we only had about ten scraggly ears of corn. (He said he was going to thin in out but he didn't.) But, the green beans had no reason not to bear fruit. The vines were healthy, they were kept watered, they had plenty of blossoms, but we got only enough beans from a dozen or more plants to cook one time for two people--not even enough to fill a can of Del Monte.

As you know, the watermelons were miniatures or watermelon-wanna-bes, the stevia died, the dill plant rotted, and the cilantro refused to grow leaves (rather funny looking). Even the parsley gave me sad face look whenever I went out to check on it.

We get the fail whale on our gardening efforts this year. Go figure.

We do have lemon balm, echinacea, mint, bee balm, and enough oregano to stock a chain of Italian restaurants. Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas this year . . .

Stevia Plant Failed

The stevia plant never did really take off and grow well, but I decided to harvest what little I had. That did it. The whole dang plant died then. It didn't put back out either; I left it for about three weeks hoping.

Update on Watermelon in Planters

The eleven watermelons that the six plants bore were very small, but they would have tasted fine if I had harvested them sooner. I let them stay on the vine too long hoping they would get to at least the size of a football. Nope. They are softball size as you can see in the photo below.

This smaller variety is like having a mini or personal watermelon that you can put in your lunch box. Aren't they cute? Don't let the USDA hear about this or the government will pay farmers to mass produce (or not) genetically modified mini watermelons for this purpose.

I think that if we had only put two plants per pot (at most three) they would have produced larger fruit. And, I'm sure the fact that I forgot to water them before the vines wilted several times didn't help production either. I finally put some mulch in the pot to cover the dirt so the moisture was retained for more than 24 hours. That helped. Wish I had thought of it sooner in the season. I saved the seeds, wondering if they will produce full-size fruit or watermelon-wanna-bes next year.