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["Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>]

Leslie; it sounds like you have a green thumb for curcubits!

I have a lot of melons in the greenhouse, climbing into the rafters, with 
the melons hanging in little hammocks so they don't pull the vines down. My 
squash are finally setting fruit, but it's less than 2 months till our first 
frost. The Baby Hubbards will ripen by then, and there are a lot of them, 
but I don't know if the larger squash will develop in time.

My peppers and eggplant gave up waiting for warm weather (it's still not 
here; we rarely get out of the 70's), but everything else is doing amazingly 
well, considering the cool weather, little sun, and lots of rain. I can't go 
out without boots...no gardening in sneakers this year. I have standing 
water everywhere because the ground is saturated and won't absorb any more. 
The raised beds are still draining well, but the paths have a couple inches 
of water.

Everything seems to be taking longer than usual, with the lack of sun, but 
looks good. Potatoes are still blooming (the plants are the biggest I've 
ever seen), and won't be ready to dig for probably a month. I'm growing 
celery for the first time, and it LOVES this weather. Even the onions and 
leeks are doing well (I didn't think they liked so much wet). The Big Beef 
tomatoes are starting to ripen, with the Abe Lincolns right behind. The 
tomato plants are huge and heavy, and starting to pull the stakes over; I 
can't tie them up as fast as they are growing. The Rose and Mortgage Lifter 
tomatoes are just setting fruit. Today I will  harvest my garlic from the 
mud (not the way it's supposed to be done...garlic is suposed to be dry 
toward the end, but even with all the rain, it looks good).

The ground is so squishy, and it rains at least every other day, so I 
haven't mowed the lawn in a couple of weeks. It looks like a jungle.

Lynn Wigglesworth
Tioga Co. PA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leslie" <cayadopi AT yahoo.com>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 9:39 AM
Subject: [Homestead] spaghetti squash


I bought a spaghetti squash for the first time earlier this year, dried a 
few seeds, and planted one seed just to see if it would grow.

Grow it has. The one plant is now over 7 foot wide (I actually took a 
measuring tape out this morning) and just over knee high and seems to be 
expanding by the minute.... only slightly exaggerating... :-)

The thing that gets me is the first squash growing (of 5 so far) is starting 
to look like a monster. It is just over 10" long and 6" (yes 6") wide !!! It 
is green with some lighter green speckles.

The one I got in the grocery store (from which the seed came from) was 
yellow (and I assume the ripe color), and was only about 7" long and maybe 
4" wide.

This spaghetti plant was planted about 12 feet away from the monster 
pumpkins and now they have grown into each other.

I sure hope there is no way that the bees can cross the monster pumpkin 
pollen with the spaghetti squash and turn the spaghetti squash into monster 
sized squash............


I planted this 1 squash, 3 pumpkins and 2 watermelon plants in the middle of 
a driveway circle, not expecting them to grow that much, or even do well 
since I didn't till the soil very deep and the sand underneath is very hard. 
I keep having to turn the vines so they don't grow over the driveway. It is 
a good thing the rabbits and ground squirrels ate the popcorn shoots and 
sweet potato slips, because they would be overrun at this point by the 
pumpkins.


Curcubits sure seem easy to grow here.......... but it is getting to the 
point (almost) that every time I see a new baby watermelon, jenny lind melon 
or honey dew I cringe... J/K, as it looks like I can freeze lots of that.

I harvested the first jenny lind the other day, much to my surprise it is 
green fleshed inside.... but ooooh so good, and as juicy as the watermelon. 
I haven't figured out when to harvest the honey dew, so I just took a chance 
and picked a big one, and it was about 90% ripe, and also very juicy but 
firm also.


I can't wait to see how big the spaghetti squash gets. I wish the hubbards 
were producing better. 5 plants, and only 2 squash.





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