Harvesting watermelon and eggplant, transplanting broccoli

Crimson Sweet watermelon Photo Nina Gentle
Crimson Sweet watermelon
Photo Nina Gentle

August is an exhausting month in our garden, and on many farms – so much to harvest (successful farming!), so many weeds growing, lots of irrigation to manage, and we’re not done with planting for another month (and then there’s still garlic!). We are ready for some crops to be finished, so we have more time for other things. Annually at this time, we engage in a “how many watermelons do we need anyway?” conversation. We have passed 400. Our goal is usually 600-800. In 2012 our peak day of watermelon harvest was August 9 with 99 melons.This year our peak day was August 6 with 127.

The 30th watermelon selected for seed, marked with a grease pencil. Photo Nina Gentle
The 30th watermelon selected for seed, marked with a grease pencil.
Photo Nina Gentle

In 2014 we decided to stop harvesting watermelons for eating on September 1, when we reached 531. We processed more for seeds for sale after that. Our Crimson Sweet Virginia Select watermelons are huge and delicious. This summer has not been so hot. We haven’t been eating 22 per day as we do in really hot summers. Maybe we can stop soon? Then we can plant a cover crop of winter rye, crimson clover and Austrian winter peas with plenty of time to grow before next year’s sweet corn crop.


Nadia eggplant. Photo Nina Gentle
Nadia eggplant.
Photo Nina Gentle

 

As I said, this summer has not been so hot, and ironically this is the third year of our eggplant variety trials, looking for good heat-resistant variety that compares well with Nadia, which we like a lot, but found wanting in the hot summer of 2012.  In 2013 we simply counted the yield per plant and compared 4 varieties.

Epic eggplant Photo Nina Gentle
Epic eggplant
Photo Nina Gentle

In 2014 we weighed the fruits too, to find out if some varieties had smaller fruits. We found that all the varieties we grew have similar sized fruits. Nadia gave the best yield per plant,  Epic was second, Traviata third, with Florida Highbush a poor fourth. For 2015 we added a fifth variety, Florida Market, (like Florida Highbush, this is also open-pollinated.).

 

Florida Highbush eggplant Photo Nina Gentle
Florida Highbush eggplant
Photo Nina Gentle

So far this year, Epic is winning, at 4.1 fruits and 3.4 pounds per plant, with an average of 0.84 pounds per fruit. Traviata is running second, at 3.1 fruits and 2.4 pounds per plant (average of 0.79 pounds per fruit). Nadia is third, at 2.3 fruits and 1.8 pounds per plant (average 0.75 pounds per eggplant). Florida Highbush (yes, it is a tall plant!) is beating Nadia on tonnage (2.1 pounds/plant) but losing on size (in other words, more smaller eggplant). Florida Market is trailing, with many days providing no harvest. I’ll do a full report in another month or so, when we decide to stop harvesting.


We have at last finished filling the gaps in our endless rows of cabbage and broccoli. We started the transplanting 4 weeks ago. We have been doing this work 7-8.30 pm, and it has seemed especially grueling, as we really needed more help. Lacking enough workers, the job went on and on. We also got into a spiral of shorter daylight by starting late and needing to continue later in the year. And the over-large plants were harder to plant and less likely to do well. And having so many shifts with the irrigation running led to over-watering especially at the low end of the field. And the weeds grew bigger . . . . More people and fewer weeks of transplanting would lead to greater success and more happiness.

We did a brief review of the process, in hopes of making enough changes so that next year the job will be less of an endurance test.Here’s our ideas so far:

  1. Adjust our crop rotation to avoid the need to plant the fall cabbage and broccoli after the spring potatoes (a very fast turnaround with no slack for things going wrong).
  2. Reduce the number of broccoli plants.
  3. Increase the number of crew each evening. Stay on top of scheduling people.
  4. Leave better information for the crew the next day. This might only save a small amount of time, but it would reduce stress. We use maps and various highlighters to show what’s done.
  5. Avoid over-watering.
  6. When it’s time to do gap-filling, assign each worker a row, and have them fill gaps in one row as they find them, watering in as they progress. Avoid any temptation to look and count gaps first – it wastes time!
  7. No, we really don’t want to do this work in the late afternoons. We’ll stick with evenings.
Fall broccoli Photo Kati Falger
Fall broccoli
Photo Kati Falger

Eggplant variety trials, first frost

Nadia eggplant. Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Nadia eggplant.
Photo credit Kathryn Simmons

Last December I wrote about trying new eggplant varieties

After my experience in the hot summer of 2012 with our Nadia eggplant refusing to set fruit in the heat, I started looking for heat-tolerant varieties. We like large, classic purple-black Italian types. For a while in early summer 2012 the Nadia didn’t grow at all – no new flowers, never mind new fruit. I looked at growing some combination of Nadia (67d, good set in cool conditions) with some of 

Epic eggplant from Osborne Seeds
Epic eggplant from Osborne Seeds

Epic 61-64d (early and huge!), from Osborne, Stokes. Recommended in Florida and Texas.

Night Shadow 68d, (size claims vary from “similar to Epic” to “smaller”), Osborne, Stokes, Siegers.

Traviata (variously recorded as 55-60d, 70d and 80d), small but good flavor. Osborne, Johnnys, High Mowing. Recommended in Florida.

Traviata eggplant from Osborne Seeds
Traviata eggplant from Osborne Seeds

Irene  (mid-early). Large, shiny purple, traditional-shaped fruit 5″ x 6-7″. Great flavor, big plant, productive. Seeds from Italy.

Classic 76d, heavy yields, high quality, does not perform well in cool conditions. Harris. Recommended in Florida and Texas.

Santana 80d, large, continuous setting. Siegers. Recommended in Florida.

These are all hybrids, but I also found a couple of promising -sounding OPs:

Florida High Bush eggplant from Seed Savers Exchange
Florida High Bush eggplant from Seed Savers Exchange

Florida High Bush 76-85d, reliable, large fruit, drought and disease resistant. Seed Savers Exchange, Cherrygal/Sustainable Seed Co.  Recommended in Florida and Texas.

Florida Market 80-85d, large, excellent for the South, not for the Northeast. Baker Creek. Recommended in Florida and Texas.

If anyone has any comparisons of two or more of these, I’d love to hear more. (Also if you have others of purple-black, classic shape to recommend.)  I can see the sense of planting several varieties, including a fast-maturing one, followed by more heat-tolerant (but slower) ones.

This year we tried three new varieties. Generally we like to have some reliable workhorses that we know well, and trial a few new things, especially if we hear our favorite varieties are no longer available. So alongside Nadia, we trialed: Florida Highbush is open-pollinated, from the Seed Savers Exchange. Epic and Traviata are hybrids from Osborne Seeds.

Ironically, this summer was not hot. One of the coolest we’ve had in a long time. We just did a final harvest in preparation for our first frost, which happened Sunday night October 20/21, and I crunched the numbers. Our record-keeping was a bit spotty, some days we didn’t write anything down. But the relative yields should be about right.

We planted 38 Nadia, 10 Florida Highbush, 10 Traviata and 12 Epic. Harvests started on July 25, later than our usual July 10, because of the cool weather. We harvested three times a week until 10/17. I was surprised how few fruit each plant provided – about 6. We only recorded the number of each variety harvested each time. I started out noting size and number of cull fruit, but that didn’t last long! Initially, Nadia was providing by far the largest fruit, with Florida Highbush the smallest. Traviata doesn’t claim to be big. In the first week of harvests, Nadia produced most per plant, but this leveled off pretty soon.

Final figures were 7.3 fruits/bush for Traviata, 6.3 for Florida Highbush, 6.1 for Nadia, and only 4.4 for Epic. In all fairness, Epic was the variety nearest the road, where the soil is drier and pebbly, and the sprinklers don’t reach so well. I wish I’d recorded weight as well as count, as Traviata’s 7.3 might not be such a good deal as it sounds.

In conclusion, I’d like to try all three varieties alongside Nadia next year, and keep records on weight as well as number of fruits from each variety. Maybe it will be hot, and I’ll learn what I originally set out to discover..