Cantaloupe
Today is my late day at work, so this morning, I met up with Kim to pick whatever was ready for harvest. When we got to the Melon Patch, we noticed many of the plants are turning brown, and decided it was time to try one of the Melons. Since we knew they would not grow any more, there was nothing to loose. I was quite surprised when we cut open a cantaloupe, and found a beautiful golden fruit inside. The taste was absolutely wonderful, and it made my Friday morning that much better.
In total, we gathered about four shopping bags full of cantaloupe and muskmelon. Soon more help arrived, including Sandy, Davie, Maurice, Jess, Jen, and The Little Gardener. That’s when I got the bad news. Jen asked me “Is this blight”, while holding a browned tomato. I looked, panicked, and ran out to the tomato patch. Late blight has found it’s way to dozens of my tropical plants. Everyone agreed that it would be best to pick the tomatoes green, and let them ripen indoors. Now it’s time for work, and I’m seriously contemplating calling in sick, so I can gather as many as possible before they are all mush. It’s not all bad thought. We have hundreds of green tomatoes, and I’m going to use this years crop to investigate methods to battle the blight. It seems like this will be a yearly affliction, so I’m going to learn all I can. Learning how to battle this blight might just be the silver lining to this ominous cloud.
