Eating Melons, Killing Rabbits

I got some melons! They are somewhat small but really sweet. New ones are growing right now as well. This is especially heartening because the cantaloupes down in my garden are suffering from bacterial wilt, which affects almost all my melons, squash, and cucumbers.

In other words,

BUT, like I said, eating melons from the greenhouse has been cash money millionaire. Here is a pic.

I know you're asking yourself, why the f*** did he pick that one to the left? Isn't it still unripe? Thanks for pointing that out. I totally screwed up when cutting out a dead melon plant. Apparently one of the plants decided it was time to shit the bed so I had to go in and cut it out. I suspect the plants were (there were four of them two to a rockwool cube) strangling each other and were also strangled by vines growing up from the floor, not to mention the weight of new melons pulling the vines down across other vines. So there I was cutting out the dead plant and I cut this one by mistake because I got confused and lost the game.

I also harvested some other stuff but before I talk about that, I want to talk about a comment I got, which was about my last post. The faithful reader (LOL WUT?) will remember that in my last chapter of this epic saga about the struggles of modern gardening, I meditated on the business of killing hornworms. The commenter said the following:

"Killing something because it is trying to eat. cool. Why not just throw them in a field? Amateur farmers who like to propagate life AND kill, i'll never get it."

Now, I'm not going to disparage this point of view, especially because it appears that I did not fully explain myself in the last post. After all, not many have the desire to read that much about my views of nature and whether anybody should feel bad about killing pests. But I should take the time to do that in this post, because I didn't mean to offend anyone by giving the impression that I enjoy killing hornworms or any other pest.

I don't like to kill the hornworms. In fact, I'd really rather avoid it, since they can't seem to die without shitting themselves and vomiting all over everything. It's disgusting. Even trying to pull them off the plants, they often hold on so tight that they get squished, and therefore mortally wounded, even before I actually kill them. After the last post, I killed 15 more or so over the next few days. By the time I got to the last ones, there were three gigantic worms and one sickly small one. The fat ones had no intention of going quietly. When I reached up I tried to pick them off and they would vomit on my fingers when I tried. I tried to pull him off with force and I don't know if it shit or just popped but it basically blew up in the air above me as I was looking up so it landed ON MY FACE. Again, feels bad man. Actually, it was more like feels mad man.

So believe me, I don't enjoy it at all. But it has to be done in some circumstances. Personally I think it's worse to spray insecticide on plants, but if I had done that, I'm sure that hardly anyone would have been troubled because massive use of lethal chemicals is for some reason more accepted. I agree with the commenter that even pests are lives deserving of respect, but by the same token, I also think plants are lives deserving of respect. Yet in my garden I weed out plants that invade on the space I have provided for my selected plants. That's what gardening is about. You have to control other predator species, and you can't give any quarter. Even in the greenhouse, where I took such great care to remove the possibility of weeds, vines grow up and choke my plants and I have to go and carefully cut them out. I don't see any reason to give the vine any less respect than the hornworm, and so I give them only the respect that I wouldn't arbitrarily kill either of them. Also, when I mow my lawn, I kill thousands of insects every time. Should I abstain from this as well?

For example, I don't have any inherent animosity toward rabbits, but this year they absolutely destroyed my beets NONE LEFT and decimated my peas and ate so much else that I don't even want to talk about it. They live in my rock pile. So I went out and bought a shotgun to do something about it. One morning I come downstairs with my boy while my wife was still asleep, and I'm getting ready to make a smoothie when I look out the window and see two rabbits on the patio. I get my child to the window to show him the cute little rabbits and instead of seeing them on the patio, they are now munching on my blueberries. ICH SEH ROT. So I put him back in the chair, get the 12 gauge and run out in my underwear ready to kill. The rabbits take off across the yard, one out of sight and the other just sitting out about 35-40 yards away under an apple tree. And he's just staring at me all cool thinking he's way out of reach. I take steady aim and let loose. BLAM. He starts doing the electric shock dance. I just did that rabbit's breeding population a favor by weeding out the one that doesn't flee far enough away. And yeah I smiled when I saw I had hit it. But only because this (gardening) is an ongoing battle and once in a while I like to see some evidence probative of my eventual (though never total) victory. All of nature is about murder and dominance between species, but it goes largely unnoticed by us because civilization has done such a good job of removing us from our original state. This is why I like what Werner Herzog says about nature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24j_wfkX5AU&feature=related

Okay enough said about that. Let's see some more pics of what I've produced.

Grape tomatoes MUY DELICIOSO

This is the sugar snack tomato. It has had trouble with the tomatoes coming ripe, because there are probably over a hundred tomatoes trying to come ripe at the same time. So I took off one branch and hung it from the light fixture in the dining room.

The quality of tomatoes I've gotten from the greenhouse has been amazing. Oh and for all the haters who say hydroponic tomatoes don't taste good, don't speak for mine.

My kid looks at a green bell pepper I picked out of the greenhouse. We also let some ripen up to red and roasted them. Very delicious.

So long without an update! How could I be this negligent? First my wife was on vacation visiting family (she took the camera), and then I got lazy, and THEN I stayed lazy. But the real story is that I've been unwilling to deal with uploading all this scheisse on the internet, which is essentially a series of tubes.

(See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE for epic win).

Anyway, before I show the progress of the plants, I wanted to put the spotlight on my latest nemesis, the green hornworm.

They were on every plant, at least a few per plant, eating tiny little fruit off the stems, and devouring leaves. Needless to say, seeing this made me a very sad panda.

You can see how they started with the smallest most tender buds and worked their way down, devouring the little infant tomatoes. As I picked each of them off, I started to feel a primal enmity between me and the worms rising up in my blood. In other words, I was losing patience with their unwillingness to come easy. Some of them would hold on for dear life and I would almost squeeze their guts out by the time I got them off and into the box which I used for collection.

By the time I had gotten all these worms (I found three more today) I realized that I couldn't just let these trespassers go. Not only could I not be assured that they wouldn't return, I couldn't bear the thought of letting them breed any further. My entschlossenheit to kill the worms was further bolstered by the fact that, before their capture, the worms had eaten enough leaves and tomatoes to have shit all over the plants themselves (though it could've been much worse I suppose). So I dumped them out on the concrete surface of our cistern and let them run for the hills for half a minute.

Then I gathered them up with a rock and smashed them.

Now before everyone starts hating on me for killing these hornworms, let me just say I don't care about the haters. You know why? B/c

There's nothing you can do about it. Of course I didn't enjoy it. When I smashed them their green blood/shit got on my leg and they popped like little grapes with juice going all over my hands. I was like LOL WUT. And of course it smelled horrible. In toto, it was actually pretty revolting.

On the growing end, much has happened since I last posted. The first to get harvested were cucumbers, which is funny since the cucumbers were the last to be planted. I think it took a mere 5 weeks for the cucumbers to go from seed to harvest. After that, I started getting grape tomatoes and jalopeno peppers. Now I've started getting regular size tomatoes. They are generally really good (especially the grape tomatoes), but some of the bigger tomatoes can be kind of mushy on the inside. I really don't know how to account for this. But it doesn't matter much because they are still good on the whole and it's nice to have tomatoes early in June.

This is the whole view when you walk in. Everything seems to be crawling along the ceiling.

This is an older pic of my better boy plant. I've started harvesting on this sucker.

These grape tomatoes have proven very tasty!

These are the blockbuster bell peppers. They are still green, and I'm going to wait for one of them to go red before I do anything, though I could eat them now.

Brandywine tomatoes. These haven't been very efficient as far as use of space goes. The early girl and better boy are far superior in this respect.

Here is my cucumber plant complete with cucumber. English cucumbers, though not quite as tasty as some varieties, are tasty even with the skin on, which I like.

Here is my favorite project. These are the melon plants (honey dew and cantaloupe). Can you spot the melons hanging in burlap sacks? There are four honey dews and four cantaloupe. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but a bad result won't be for lack of trying; rather it'll be for lack of funding, since I can't justify spending another $150 on an EC/TDS meter. I need this meter to get specific information about the nutrient concentration in my reservoirs and the PH, etc. BUT, that will have to wait until next season. Irgendwann wird es viel zu teuer! NEVERMIND, back to the pics.

I'm extremely excited about these melons and I hope they won't disappoint me. I also like my strawberries.

Melons Reach the Top

I'm done with Law school for good, which is good because it was really getting in the way of my greenhouse and garden activities. Spending time working with plants is a great stress reliever. I especially enjoy training and pruning the plants. I've also cloned a few of the tomato plants and the melon plants, though the latter have not yet rooted (pics forthcoming for the clones in another point!). I'm pretty stoked about the amount of growth that has occurred in the last couple weeks. For one thing, the melon plants have fruited, and I've pruned off all but 3 or 4 melons on each plant. Here is what they looked like a few days ago:

And like I said they have reached the top. This is what they looked like tonight.

Here you see how much they've already grown since hitting the roof. The question is, do I train them along the roof, or is it better for the melon production (not to mention other sun-loving plants in the greenhouse) that I just prune off the end of the vine and work with what I have? I am unsure about the correct course of action. :(

Of course the tomatoes are also doing well. The tallest plants are 38 inches at this point.

This is the biggest tomato so far. It's from a brandywine and it's about 3 inches in diameter right now.

From my Napa Grape plant:

Here is my jalopeno plant (center).

Here are my english cucumber plants. I planted these later than the tomatoes to ensure that the tomatoes would be in full swing when the cucumbers were ready. OH YUM.

4 weeks on

I'm not going to have time to ruminate more on building a greenhouse out of windows in this post, since I'm busy with law school finals (last semester!), so I'll just update with the progress of the plants, since it's been 4 weeks today that I put the plants in the greenhouse.

To start, the tomatoes are ranging from about 15" tall to 22". The sugar snack and brandywine are growing the most vigorously at this point, but the early girl seems to be catching up. The better boy has yet to show its teeth but I still reckon when all is said and done it will produce some awesome tomatoes. All of the tomato plants have a couple sets of flowers on them, so I'm going to switch to bloom nutrients this week. Here are pics:

I put my child in front of them to try to give them some scale.

All 6 of my baby girls. They grow up so fast!

My sugar snack and brandywine. Both about 22" and growing a half inch per day. It's amazing how different the leaves on the heirloom brandywine look from all the other tomatoes. I wonder if I'm going to regret not choosing varieties specifically bred for greenhouse use.

The melons are looking good as well. They have anywhere from 11-15 nodes at the time, and they're starting to get into the range where I can let them flower. I'm also at the point with these that I'm going to switch nutrients. I really like watching these things grow.

...And now for something completely different. On Tuesday I finished my latest section of wall (just past the arch), and on Thursday I built a raised bed by sinking stones vertically into the ground. Then I laid some red plastic and planted them (apparently red plastic reflects the right kind of light to give tomatoes improved yields, but the literature is conflicting).

Here are the pepper plants we recently planted in the raised bed to the left. This is where we planted tomatoes last year.

Here are some of the sweet charlies (strawberries) that are on the terracing around the cistern. They seem very vigorous.

Here are the beds of strawberries we put in back in the fall of 2008.

Putting on Shadecloth

Before I get started on this, I wanted to tell anyone who reads this (lol wut readers?) that I'm going to write my next post on some semi-comprehensive web research on how to build a greenhouse out of recycled windows and other materials. Obviously I'm not an expert, but there have been a lot of people who have tried this and similar projects with varying results. I'll try to put on a lot of links and what I think about the various resources.

Now, on account of how hot I anticipate this summer getting, I ordered some aluminet shade cloth from gemplers.com. I also ordered some of these hinged grommets.

I cut the shade cloth to size and hemmed the sides (my wife did this!) and stretched a piece across the south side and the roof. I put in screws, leaving the head a half inch from fully embedded, to act as anchors. The shadecloth is 50%, and already yesterday (sunny and 66 degrees) I noticed that the air in the greenhouse was not heating nearly as fast. The greenhouse now looks even more like a futuristic spaceship.

Those are strawberry beds in the foreground.

I don't anticipate covering much more window space in in shadecloth, since most of the worst spots are now covered, and since many of the remaining window spaces can be opened (though I guess I could make it so that they could be opened with shadecloth applied if I was careful on the tailoring side). I might place individual pieces on a window on the west wall and one on the east wall, but I'm going to wait and see what happens on an 85 degree day before I take those steps.

I'm probably going to order a new 12" variable speed exhaust fan from www.littlegreenhouse.com because I don't think the fan I have installed has nearly enough power to turn the air over in the greenhouse quickly enough. Since tomatoes won't fruit and start to become damaged at prolonged temperatures above 93 degrees, I'm going to have to need all the help I can get from an exhaust fan to keep growing through July and August.

When I started this venture I thought operating a greenhouse was all about keeping things warm, but I've quickly figured out that at least here in Kentucky, 6 months out of the year it will be all about keeping the damn thing cool enough. Right now in my heat-fighting repertoire I have a 650 cfm evaporative cooler, which will be a big help on the hottest days where I can't cool the overall ambient temperature enough with the fan and shadecloth. I also have 8 windows that can be opened if you count the slide on the door. The problem is that none of the windows open on the south side. Oh well. If I buy the new exhaust fan I'll be guaranteed to have an air exchange that ranges from 1100 to 550 cfm. The worst case scenario is that all of these measures won't be enough to cool the greenhouse on a 95 degree day and then my only real options will be to buy a higher percentage shade cloth (like 80%) or to build a fogger to mist water into the air. I'd rather not cut out more light with a denser shadecloth, and building a fogger sounds like a risky proposition, b/c I haven't made everything in the greenhouse water proof, and have electrical stuff all over the floor. I'd have to come up with a solution for that before trying to build a fogger. Not to mention the $$$ it will cost, and that I basically don't have any more $$$ to spend on it. I'm so over-budget I feel like a government contractor. Add that problem to the fact that I have no experience with foggers and I don't have the slightest clue how to build an effective one, and that's my last ditch option.

I also checked my ph for the first time in a while and discovered it was way up there, between 7 and 7.5. Apparently the best range to be in is 5.8-6.2. I hadn't worried about it for a while because the plants looked so good. Maybe things will start to look even better now that I've fixed it. In any case here are what the plants look like now.

I also put my other plants that are going in the ground in a few weeks in the greenhouse:

I ordered more plant yoyos from www.bghydro.com but after 5 days they have YET to ship them. I am severely disappoint.

My face (not literally) when I saw that they hadn't shipped them yet.

Tomatoes kicking into gear

My tomatoes (or at least 3 or 4 out of the 6) are starting to kick into gear. Yesterday was pretty humid and not so hot (78) that my fans and evaporative cooler couldn't cool things down a bit. I ordered some aluminet shade cloth which I'll have to cut to size and put in grommets to fasten it to the greenhouse. It's a 50% shade factor so hopefully it'll help me keep the temps down on the 95 degree days this summer. I also for the first time really opened all the windows that I could. Here is a pic with all the windows open.

A view from the window looking in:

A few tomato plants. The one to the left is a brandywine. It already has the beginnings of flowers.

Here are my melon plants. As you can see I've already hooked them up to the ceiling to train them straight up. They already have flowers on them.

Here are my peppers plants. The one on the left is a blockbuster hybrid (bell pepper) and the one on the right is a jalopeno plant.