A short trip to the vegetable garden!

     If you have read my profile you will have noticed that I enjoy vegetable gardening. This spring and summer have been particularly difficult in this part of Texas because of a serious lack of rain.
     Since we had a really cold winter I planted early to get a head start on the summer heat, so seeds went in the ground the last week of February and the first week of March, yes I use seeds rather than seedlings. I planted the obligatory cucumber (both burpless and burpies), radishes, carrots, lettuce and salad greens, yellow and red bell pepper, Anaheim peppers, jalapeno's, basil, dill, oregano, rosemary, Italian and regular parsley, cherry, roma and beefsteak tomatoes and for the first time I tried water melon.
    We had a nice heavy rain very early in March and then really no rain at all to speak of until the second week of June (1") so the veggies were struggling with the heat and the lack of water. A water hose was brought out on a regular basis to keep everything alive, but big city water with all its "beneficial" additives is no match for what mother nature brings from above. After a few water bills of near $100.00 and one over $100.00, and not feeling like bringing the City of Houston out of its financial woes by myself the veggies were basically abandoned to fend for themselves.
     The tomatoes acquired a blight and only one tomato plant has survived. What the blight didn't get the Mocking birds did eating the tomatoes in their search for moisture. The blight and fungus spread to the cucumber plants so they had to be pulled. A fungicide was sprayed on everything but I fear too late, but one was trying to save what was left. We did 5 good harvests of radishes, a little bit of lettuce and salad greens. The basil plant seem to be holding its own is as the oregano and the rosemary. The bell pepper plants are not great producers because of the lack of water, the Anaheim peppers are holding their own as are the Jalapenos.
     Today I harvested the first water melon which exibited all the described and required signs of having ripened, (yellow on the bottom and a dry stem). Well, it was a bit of a disappointment to look inside as it is not quite ripe yet, but appears to be almost too ripe in the center.

Looking good but not quite there yet.

It is still mouthwatering to look at, and if you look closely it looks like it is upset

     Since we only planted one watermelon plant there are only two melons left on that plant so they will get one more week of Texas sun, and we hope rain, since today we had a full 2" of rain and now tropical storm "Don" may bring some much needed rain to the Southern part of Texas, but we hope that some of it will fall in this vicinity.