Cos Seedlings. Bananas and Pineapples? (and where are my Pepino?)

Parris Island Cos Seedlings

If these weren't Cos, they would be suffering in rows with the Black Seeded Simpson.

However. Since they are, here they is in 3" pots with seed starting mixture. Yes, I pulled and potted up the damn lettuce seedlings.

Well, they weren't doing well, that's why.

I hope these start to grow a lot larger than they, and a lot faster than they have been. I don't know if it's possible to just make plants grow slower by bad or mistaken culivation techniques - maybe it's the heat.

On another note, I was looking for pre-stratified berry seeds on Amazon and came across some dwarf banana and pineapple plants. I think those would just frusrate me, like having one pepper plant. I mean, it's a dwarf - so how many pineapple is it really going to put off? Plus, it's a large fruit, which probably means that it takes like three months to ripen one of them. Store-bought pineapple can't be that bad.

Speaking of tropical fruit, I planted like twenty Pepino seeds and I haven't seen hide or hair of them. They arrived very small and dry and almost flaky. I knew I should have asked for my money back. I think they were at the bottom of the barrel. I'll withhold the vendor's name until I see if they will remedy the situation - same guy I got all my melon seeds from, and they germinated 100% (or better!).

:)

Melon Varieties

Recently transplanted Ha Ogen Honey galia melons.

Here's a list of the varietals of melons I am growing this year, in no particular order:

Ha Ogen Honey (Galia)
Collective Farm Woman (Muskmelon)

Creme de la Creme (Muskmelon)
Honey Girl (Charentais Canteloupe)
Jenny Lind (Green Muskmelon)
Early Silver Line (Oriental)
Ambrosia (Muskmelon)
Prescott Ford Mont Blanc (Canteloupe)
Snow Mass (Honeydew)
Amy (Persian)
Dove (Galia)
Lambkin (Piel del Sapo)
Athena (Muskmelon)
Orange Cream (Orange-Flesh Watermelon)
Crimson Sweet (Red-Flesh Watermelon)
Yellow Doll (Yellow-Flesh Watermelon)

The very same Athena muskmelon (from 'Melon Babies' post) about a week later.

Growing Kellogs

No, I did not seed my Frosted Flakes.

Trust me, it won't work.

However, these little individual cereal thingies make ideal starting pots for those seedlings that have to be pulled and potted up, like tomatoes and eggplants and peppers. (Oh my).

Left front (plugs) is White Star Hybrid eggplant seedlings. Front right (Cheerios) will be Fresno Sweet peppers (provided the seeds come anything close to true). The remaining (Frosted Flakes) are actually Tarpan and Sarian strawberries.


Yes, I'm growing strawberries from seed, buying plants just seems so much like cheating, and the Quinault that we planted this year and have runners from is totally useless (don't plant it).

Melon Babies

I love melons. Really, almost anything that starts with Curcubita, because I don't like Watermelons so much. One of the Athena muskmelons that I direct-seeded as an experiment have three large ripening fruits. This is a picture of one of them about three days after pollenation, I'm guessing.

Burpee's Early Silver Line Melon

 The Early Silver Line that I started first under lights have at least six melons of this size or larger. I guess they really mean 'early'.

Two ripening Early Silver Line melons in the patch.

It's supposed to be an Oriental type (no, not Asian - Oriental). These grow crazy fast as soon as they have roots and the little nodes root to the ground. It's delicious groundcover.

Peppers

Bell Pepper (from seed, approx 2.5 mos old)

Our bell pepper plants produced several wondrous fruits, and then two that had rotten-thin walls on one side, and then one that was very small. They all ripened to chocolate and then full bright red without issue, and tasted fine.

We recently transplanted all of our container peppers, all of the bells from the seedling area, and three rows of eggplants (black and white cultivars) to a new half-raised bed. Pics of that coming as soon as I can find the USB cable for the cam.

So far, we've had Costa Rican Sweet, our 'generic' Habanero, Fresno Sweet, Red Bell, some seasoning peppers and tons of jalapenos. Then came the heat, and the containers stopped. The bells in the seedling area were too close together to fruit, so we dug the new bed. We expect fantastic results from the fifty peppers and thirty eggplants before frost, at which point we'll probably dig the rare ones and bring them in if they're doing well and have wooded their stems completely.