Volunteer Watermelons
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I have a confession to make: this year my garden looks pitiful. It’s weedy, and brown, and dry, and just plain sad. Surprisingly enough, it’s producing a bounty of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, and peppers to name a few. But it’s not pretty. It ain’t pretty at all. I can’t bear to show any pictures of the mess – it’s beginning to rival my laundry room.
Things just don’t look as healthy as in years past, except for this, a volunteer watermelon.
There are actually a total of three watermelon plants, I believe. They’ve popped up on a small slope near our garden and have been going strong. They’re healthy, vibrant and thriving with little rain.
We decided to scale the garden back (other than the tomatoes) this year, and didn’t plant any melons. It seems these watermelon plants had other plans in mind. And boy, am I glad they did.
Meet Bertha.
She’s the largest thus far, marching her way right toward a Melon Salad real soon. And she’s not alone. Bertha has a whole family following in her footsteps, five to be exact, as far as I can tell.
This one looks a little wonky, but I bet it’ll taste just fine.
Here’s a cute one. It’s fun to watch the watermelons grow a little bit each night.
And there are signs of more to join the clan.
How ironic is it that the plants we planted, fertilized, have watered and tended to are struggling to get by, but these volunteers are the strongest, healthiest plants in the garden?
Maybe next year I’ll not plant one thing, and see what pops up on its own. I may try it, just once.
So, how’s your garden growing this season? Any surprises? Anything new you’ve tried that you’d like to share?
Bertha is beautiful. Amen for volunteers, and not just in the garden!
Garden big enough for the multitude. Pa outdid himself. To the point, he can’t give veggies away. My surprise was a different variety of peas – plants early, no bugs, easy to pick and shell and deer did not bother. Yea!
Our tomatoes are doing fabulous. Our “new thing” this year is a habanero plant…which has produced quite a few peppers that are in the process of ripening…I’m excited and a little scared of their heat…
I had a good crop of blackberries, strawberries and blue berries this summer. The squash plants have produced a lot and I’ve had tomatoes to share at work. We only had 2 small melons but they were delicious. The only plants that haven’t done as well are the bell peppers but that’s only because the tomato plants took over the container. I’m surprised that everything has done so well despite the heat and dryness.
LUCKY! I love watermelon!
Nice! We’ve had to do our garden completely with containers for the past 3 years. This year we added watermelons….so far, we have some babies 🙂
Our gardens are sad. Pretty bad when you grow for a living. Aren’t volunteer plants fun! They’re like an unexpected gift!
I’m growing sponge gourd! It’s sort of like zucchini, I guess. No flowers yet, but the vines and twirly twines are crawling everywhere! Your watermelons are incredibly cute 😀
Wei-Wei
That’s awesome! This is my first year with a garden and it’s not doing so well!? The weather has been a little crazy–I’m going to blame it on that and NOT on my undecided green thumb! Maybe your weather is the culprit as well–I live in Asheville so we’re not too far.
Have I mentioned lately that I want to be your neighbor? Nothing voluntarily grows in Kansas, except weeds. They volunteer to grow right up all over the place.
Love your little melon clan.
these pictures are just beautiful. yummy… new to your site and i’m having so much fun!
I’m visiting from Mingle Monday. Your pictures are BEAUTIFUL!!! I’ve just started my first fruit and vegetable garden ever this summer with my kids. Our seeds have only been in the ground for three weeks, but we already so excited about our little plants sprouting up all over. I don’t have a green thumb and I’ve really struggled to get things to grow in the past so we started out with just a few simple things for our first shot at all of this… sunflowers, pumpkins, peas, and watermelons. We’ll see what happens!
You can check out the entire saga of this hindered by hopeful gardener here:http://www.mommytopics.com/category/garden
Love your site!
Blessings
Rachymommy – MommyTopics.com
They look fantastic, and I’m willing to bet they taste even better. The watermelon seeds didn’t quite make it this year. I blame the extremely cold and wet spring. I just couldn’t get the plants to flourish. Maybe I’ll just toss some in this fall and see if they volunteer themselves next spring? Not a bad idea. I have plenty of volunteer tomatoes this year.
That’s funny in a NOT funny kind of way! How awesome to have fresh watermelon sneaking up and growing in your very own yard!
My garden in the ground is struggling bad. We just moved here and had no idea about the soil, but we found that it was very sandy and had alot of beauty bark spread in the beds. There are roses and some bushes growing and they seemed to do well! But the garden is a different story. I water my plants in the ground with a compost tea-type-thing at least once a week and try to keep the slugs at bay with slug killer. They ate 4 zuccini plants.
My potted plants are growing like gangbusters. We have strawberries, zuccini, basil, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and romas. We will have things that we can eat soon and I see my first poppy flower getting ready to open!!! All of these I grew from seed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things mature before the fall…
Oh, how I envy you, your intrepid volunteer watermelons, and the fact that your garden is still active. My fruit/veggie garden is in super-steamy Gulf Coast Florida where everything (including voting for Presidential elections) seems to be backwards. Sept. is the start of my gardening season and May/June-ish is typically the end. Except for one inedible, withered tomato, my garden is fallow now and wont get started again until next month. I have SUCH plans, though, as I do every year!
I recently lost my Mate and my daughter moved me next door to her. Which happens to be next to her garden space. Yesterday we tilled and raked the space. We planted tomatoes, zuchini, habeneros,, but decided to add a few more things. The coolest thing is when we were sone planting these my daughter was admiring our edforts when she noticed a patch of colunteer wayermelons ????. There are about 10 little ones there . We are so excited!
It’s odd. I planted a lilac bush this year, and later I had these vines of showy lobed yeaves and yellow flowers taking over the area the bush was in. I pulled them out as I didn’t know what they were. I’ve since discovered they were watermelon plants. I wonder if there was watermelon compost in the pot of soil that came around the lilac roots when I bought it, as I din’t expect watermelons plants to arise. If they come back I’ll transplant them elsewhere (I like watermelon.)