Like the title says above, August has been and is insane. Starting with some gross news. Who knew that when bone meal gets wet, it becomes rancid? All things considered bone meal being what bone meal is, I should have known. So the other day, I was about to top dress some cukes and paddy pans with said bone meal and was totally aghast-ed by the stench. I was like, "whatever," as I really wanted to fert my crops. And then when I dug my hand shovel into the meal, I had a total "Lost Boys" moment where the whole five-gallon bucket came alive with maggots. Only, I wasn't vampirically hallucinating, the entire bucket was bone meal, maggots, and wretched. I tried to take a picture, but the little buggers just blend so well with the meal, the jpeg wasn't worth publishing. I ended up dumping the bucket and its contents right into the middle of my compost, thereby making a high phos compost blend that will probably need major leaf dilution before it's safe to use. Who knew?
About two weeks back, the melon patch came in fast and hard just like my metal. Smellin' Melon Mania I was born! In one corner of the ring was the classic, four to seven pound, ultra foo-foo, French Charentais, tasting like the best cantaloupe ever plus rose water with pink-orange juicy-juice flesh. In the other corner was the somewhat scrappy, one to three pound, tag team of the Far North classic American cantaloupe, and its Armenian flashy cousin, the Tigger, looking like a Super Mario Brother's fireball and handsomely displayed in the photo above. The Tigger's aroma was somewhat intoxicating, and I was starting to feel like a bumble bee in my own home with every room smellin' of melons.
Now, this Melon Mania may have sounded like a little slice of heaven, and for the most part it was like a little slice of heaven. But when 20 ripe melons are picked in one day, the refrigeration bottleneck of my business is immediately realized. Subsequently, I learned a new kind of hustle because of my refrigeration problem. I had some knowing and unknowing participants in my quest to de-melon. On the knowing side of things, I give thanks to Rob Burgoyne and Lakewood's LEAF organization, who let me guest-vend on a 12-hour Facebook-notice in front of the Lakewood Library as part of LEAF's CSA program on Wednesday the 18th. And a week prior on the unknowing side of things, I give thanks to Lakewood's Bela Dubby coffee shop, which subsequently allowed me to visually and aromatically entice their customers with my melons, when incidentally I was bringing a Charentais to a friend during Bela's movie night, and when incidentally I had three others just sitting there on my car seat. All in all, I sold four Charentais out of the Subaru that evening.
For the sake of blog publishing, "August Is Insane" will need to continue in the near future.
Nice melons ;)
ReplyDeleteWish I'd found your blog before transplanting 36 tomato seedlings using maggot-laced bone meal in the planting holes!! When the seedlings showed up wilted the next day, I thought it was just shock from the transplanting. On day two I began to investigate and found maggot-like worms at the bottom of the planting holes At first I thought they were cutworm larvae, but it was weird because the location of the worms was definitely linked to the bone meal--plus the next dozen seedlings I planted without bone meal were thriving. I had purchased the bone meal in a 50 lb. bag and then transferred the contents into old kitty litter containers after the bottom of the bag got wet when our carport flooded. So far I've only lost 10 of my seedlings, but I've learned a lot, and, I'm glad I found your blog.
ReplyDelete