The Melon

I am so proud of my first big size melon so it gets its own post. As promised here is a picture of it. Next to it a ping-pong ball for comparison.

Can't wait to pick it. Any day soon now.

It is also one of a kind because all the others were honeydew with smooth rind but this one is a cantaloupe with net pattern on its rind. I have put a plastic "tray" under it to avoid direct contact with soil and maybe to make it difficult for bugs to get to it.

Backyard melons

Well... Summer is peaking and the days are very very hot. The cats hang out where there is any breeze during the day, or just fall asleep along the corridors.

Oreo-chan having a look at the garden

The melon experiment is over for this year. The result, 7 or 8 small unripe melons, 4 normal size very sweet and tasty red melons and one huge melon still waiting on the vine. I am very excited about how that one will turn out. Not very good results, but it was my absolute first time and I made lots of mistakes. I gave the chilled unripe small melons to the chickens and they seemed to enjoy it in the heat.

They're not so picky

I saved some seeds from the very high quality melons we got for our furusato tax. Hopefully they will be ok for next year for second round of my melon challenge.
I got my finger out and went out and dug for a couple of hours at a time in the heat, and the result is that I have finished half of the backyard now.

Neat.

I plan to grow potatoes on the top level, to minimize weeds to start with and maybe enhance the soil quality. Not sure what to do with the second and third levels for autumn. Right now the melons are phasing out. Maybe more potatoes? hehe. The lower (forth from above) level is now de-weeded and mulched with leafs, and I have transplanted a dozen strawberry seedlings from my main area. It was originally thought to be flower level, but Chika said she prefers edibles. So do I. Of course we will have the occasional flower here and there to attract the bees and deter the pests but no special flower section. Lowest is the passion fruit that is climbing ever higher. It is almost as high as the second floor balcony floor now.
If you zoom in right into the center of the picture, you can spot the huge melon behind the trellis and leafs. I will take a proper picture later before harvesting it.

200

Wow, post number 200. To celebrate, I will put up some pictures of the garden I took with the Pentax last weekend when it was really really hot.

Eggplants looking really yummy

Big blueberries looking really yummy

Tomatoes looking really yummy

Peanuts looking really... leafy

Closer look at the leafs

There is a terminator hiding and waiting

The huge sunflower I harvested looking really yummy

Giant hornet?

Of course with the Pentax I just had to take a picture of the lily in the pond that does its beauty more justice.

Ahhhh...

 The pond is a nice feature. Plus dragonflies have started laying eggs in it. The frogs are all gone into hiding, but the other day I did spot one of them jumping around under the leafs in the peanuts bed. It had grown up quite a lot.
I have seen Tora chasing and eating lizards so I suspect that from the maybe 30 frogs that survived and are hiding around the garden most of them are being eaten up by Tora.... just a theory.

Dragonflies love to spend time around the pond

I'd like to think that we have less mosquitoes now that the chickens and the dragonflies and frogs are around. But I still get bitten a lot. Of course, compared to last year same time it is much less...
I have noticed that every morning there is a big wasp drinking/gathering water from the pond. Same thing in the evenings. I did watch closer for a few days, and it turned out they are several wasps taking turns and making rounds to bring water from the pond to I guess their nest. I tried to follow them and see where they fly to but it seems to be far away past the neighbor houses. At least that's a plus. I don't want a wasp or hornet next in our house or the garden.

Not sure what kind it is though

I hope it's not a giant hornet (suzumebachi). It is pretty big.. Maybe 4 cm. I don't wanna get too close to snap a picture, and they fly away quickly once they had their fill. I used the telescope lens on the Pentax to take the picture above. So this is the best picture I have so far. I will try to take a better picture some day.

The urban chickens

Here are some random chicken pictures I took with my Pentax. The days are hot and the chickens get to enjoy a cold watermelon rind almost every day. Plus whatever I happen to cut down from the garden. On top of that they get fallen or damaged blueberries, whatever bugs I dig up or catch, or a big handful of meal worms from my own worm farm.

They mostly stay under the shade of the big tree. Good thing I didn't cut it down.

On the ground is a huge sunflower I cut down and gave them the other day

Water nom nom

i think they're pretty happy

Pentax

Had enough of the crappy sony camera that messed up all the pictures, so I decided to dust off my old Pentax. Even with no special settings it still beats the sony by miles. When I take a picture of the black kittens, it actually captures what I see at that moment, instead of the guesswork that sony gives me. Result: a cute kitten with features in its face, rather than a black furry spot.

Oreo chilling on the table

Oreo chilling on the floor

Minion chilling on the floor

Tora chilling outside

The days are extremely hot so he has become expert at finding shade

Oreo doesn't get to go outside, but I am sure he would love to

I had forgotten what a joy taking pictures could be, thanks to sony

NPK

I don't need to get the garden soil analyzed to know it's crappy. Almost everything I have planted has turned out with huge foliage and little to no fruit or flowers. So I will need to get some serious fertilizing with potassium and phosphorous going.
Here is an example of what I am talking about. The passion fruit is now way over its net, but not a single flower.

2 meters and still growing. Hope it survives the frost.