Harvest Monday

Northern New Mexico Melon

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop sponsored by Daphne! Go on over and visit with other gardeners and see what is being harvested around the world from back yard gardens, balconies, and window boxes!

It seems I was terrible about taking pictures last week. I was working a huge number of hours and actually didn't harvest a lot, even tho there were things to be eaten.

I did have to climb up on the roof of the house. There are a lot of squash up there, but most are not ready to pick. But a couple of things were stuck in the rain gutter and actually spreading the metal apart as they grew. Got them out and found this Norther New Mexico Melon while I was up there. From the shape I'd say pollination was incomplete and watering a bit irregular, also something was eating on one end. It only weighted about 5 pounds, but it was as sweet and delicious as the 11 pound monster I picked before.

Sadly I don't seem to have any pictures, but I did pick more yellow wax beans, a few Italian Heirloom tomatoes, lots of small salad tomatoes, some more Burgess Buttercup squash. Hopefully my work will slow down a bit this week and I'll have time to take more pictures.

I did snap a few out in the chicken pen.

Harley

My young Welsh Harlequin drake gets prettier by the day. He got his curly drake feather on his tail, the other 3 ducks don't have one (yet, they are a bit younger) so they may all be ducks. Harley is getting the rich green feathers on his head now.

Welsummer X Americauna cross

I'm trying to decide sex on my young poults. They are Welsummer x Americauna, so they could lay olive eggs. They will be 6 months old in Dec, though I don't expect them to start laying until the days get longer in spring. Two look to have a single type comb like this one.

Welsummer X Americauna cross

Two of them have this funny sort of double comb. (I'm not really up on all the comb types and names. Didn't even realize there were different ones until just a few years ago.)

At first I thought these doubled combs would be roosters, but then realized that the Americauna have this sort of comb, while Welsummers have normal single combs. So still, anyone's guess at this point!

My apologies for not getting around to read and comment on everyone's posts last week. I tried, but I worked over 50 hours and just couldn't do it. Hoping this week is a bit easier!

Harvest Monday

Northern Arizona Melon?

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions. It's great fun to visit with gardeners from around the world.

The biggest news this week is the giant muskmelon from the greenhouse bed. It weighed 11 pounds! Now I'm pretty sure I planted Hale's Best Jumbo and the other large melons are round like Hale's. The only thing I can think is either some seeds of Northern Arizona Melon, which I grew years ago and is the only football shaped melon I've grown, got mixed in or this is something out of the compost.

It's been a few years since I've grown Northern AZ so I don't really remember what they should look like inside or out. As you can see a slice of this melon almost fills my dinner plate, the flesh was sweet and delicious, and tend all the way to the skin. It has a flavor resembling cantaloupe but not quite the same. Of course I saved all the seeds ;=)

green chili

Other harvests included green chilis. I'm not positive, because my plastic labels with permanent marker all faded completely out, but I think these might be New Mexico Joe E Parker.

Baby Blue Hubbard

The sole Baby Blue Hubbard plant in the back garden only set one fruit and then looked like it was dying. Possibly disease, possibly from lack of water. The stem on this one looked like it was drying out so I went ahead and pulled and cooked it. It really needed to go longer, a bit watery and not as sweet as I think it will get later towards fall. But a good lesson, since I have four more plants out front. I will be patient and wait.

eggs

There were only about a dozen eggs all told from the hens this week, but one day we got three, so I think the molty one might be getting back to laying again.

Market Stand

My oldest grand daughter, Miracle, spent the weekend with me. She brought her violin to the farmer's market and played for folks. She even got a $2 tip.

Here on the table, from left to right is more of the weeks harvest;, Tromboncinno squash ( I had to climb on the roof to get one of them!), Snow White, Princepe Borghese and Red Currant tomatoes, Mountain Rose potatoes, eggplants, Rond de Nice squash. In the back are some yellow Scallopinni, white patty pan, yellow zuchinni, and some odd squash that I think must be either something out of the compost or something that came in with the yellow zuchinni seed. They look a bit like a cross between zuchinni and yellow crookneck. They taste fine tho.

In the red crate are herb plants, sorrel, basil, lavender, rosemary.