Home Grown Watermelons
Friday, 14 March 2008
We decided to plant watermelons a while ago & have been eagerly watching them grow. Then the other day Jet was stomping around the garden & he broke one of them off the vine. Its quite small & we cant quite remember what type of watermelon we got, but it is possible it was a baby watermelon plant because the stem bit (is that what its called???) was all wizened & brown so maybe it was ready to drop off anyway? Regardless though, it was ripe & very, very yummy!!! Here's a pic of it, you can see how small it is compared to the size of my hand - not quite the size of a regular watermelon hey!
It was even going a little brown around the edges which makes me think also that it had reached its full size & maturity. Jet certainly enjoyed it:
We have so many yummy fruit trees in the garden now. We planted orange, lemon, mandarin, lemonade, lime, cherry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry & passion fruit about a year ago now. We picked all the fruit off most of the trees for the first 6 months or so because the place we bought it from told us the trees would grow more if we did (wouldn't have to put all their nutrients into growing fruit i guess). Unfortunately, maybe because of the odd weather. We also have 2 mango trees that are about 7 years old now. We got quite a few mango's from them last year but unfortunately something went wrong this year & all the buds went black & fell off. Bugger!!! Hopefully next summer we have more fruit than we know what to do with - YUMMY!!!!!!
Babble byMel : ) at 9:29 AM 5 comments
Labels Gardening
How much better is home grown!
Sunday, 16 December 2007
Rocky's been doing lots of work in our garden. I spent Saturday morning walking around to all the neighbours houses with cucumbers cause we have like a billion of them growing down the back.
My favourite thing in our garden at the moment though is the strawberries, they are soooooo yummy! Its amazing how much better stuff you grow yourself tastes than the stuff you buy in the shops. I went out to the garden & picked a handful of strawberries for Jet & I to eat after lunch - they look gorgeous & they taste even better:
Yummo!!!
Babble byMel : ) at 9:09 PM 5 comments
Labels Gardening, Green Living
R.I.P Little Avocado Tree :(
Friday, 30 November 2007
Remember my cute little avocado tree sprout i grew from a seed that i posted about last week? Well, my little monkey was playing out side & i turned around for two seconds & when i looked back to my horror i discovered this:
Babble byMel : ) at 11:06 PM 2 comments
Labels Gardening
Growing an Avocado Plant from a Seed
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Im so proud of myself - for once im actually doing the opposite of killing a plant (im not exactly known for my green thumb). I go through fazes with food, i get fixed on one thing i just have to have & at the moment its avocados. As a result we have stacks of avocado seeds, so instead of putting them in the compost i decided i was going to attempt growing an avocado tree. So a couple of months ago i did some research & came up with two ways to germinate an avocado seed.
The first way is to stick 4 toothpicks into the seed about half way up, then place it on top of a jar & fill it with water so the bottom quarter of the seed is covered. The seed needs to be pointy side up (so the broad side is on the bottom).
The second way is to put the seed pointy side up in a pot with gravel in the bottom & soil in the top (so it drains well). Then make sure the top quarter of the seed is sticking out of the soil.
I attempted both of these methods, i got a big pot & stuck 3 seeds in it & put it just outside our front door & i put two seeds in water on our window sill. I watched them for one month, then two, then three & nothing happened. I might have gotten rid of them & just stuck them in the compost if i wasn't so lazy - so i just left them there ;)
When we came back from holidays i got the most wonderful surprise. Two of my seeds had sprouted. One in the pot & one in the water. The one in the water only has a root out the bottom so far though, nothing out the top. Here's some pics:
The poor little pot plant one got snapped at Jets party *sob*, its snapped almost the whole way through but it still looks as though the leaves have grown & opened out more since then so hopefully it will be ok.
Im so proud of my little plants. My plan is to plant two in our backyard then grow a stack more to take up to Rocky's parents farm to plant an orchid of them - lol!
If anyone wants any more info on growing avocado trees from seeds check out this link they have lots of great info on their.
Babble byMel : ) at 10:48 PM 5 comments
Labels Gardening
