Awww..September arrives!

Well, as the summer winds down, your thoughts should turn to harvesting the last of your summer crop and if you are of the mind, beginning preps for fall crops.  I have busily been harvesting that which is ready.  My friends the squirrels have become more active lately and thus are also partaking of my last crops.  Luckily, there is enough for all of us so I don't begrudge them the few items they have absconded with.  Everyone has to eat after all.
I did some harvesting of the summer crops this morning.  I decided it was time to pull my watermelon I have been eyeing for quite some time.  As seen below, it's a Celebrity watermelon that has grown to 17" and 15 lbs.  Haven't cut it open yet but we will tonight.  This is the first time I've grown this type so we shall see what all that time and effort has come to.

With fall in mind, last weekend I planted 18 po.ts in my two hydroponic systems.  The crops are essentially various lettuces, carrots and a smattering of various herbs.  It may be a little late on getting them planted but as you can see, they are taking off rather nicely.  The first system to the left is one that I bought from cleanairgardening.com after seeing similar systems at Disney many years ago. The one on the right is a makeshift one I cobbled together after buying the fixture

from a closeout sale of a retailer.

Both systems work well but I would give the nod to the Clean air system for it's compact size.   But the re-purposed unit is quite good with root crops like carrots which is what you see in some of the bowls.  I feed them with the nutrient solutions I also buy from Clean air seen below to the left.  The Coke bottles have each nutrient solution and I mix 3/4 of a teaspoon of each into a gallon of water and flood the systems with that in the morning and evening.  Growth is always good.

My wife, son and I also picked our concord grapes yesterday that we have growing along our fence. We made organic (because I don't do anything but water them) grape juice and jam.  Can't wait to try the juice tomorrow morning.  I'm going to either grow more vines from cuttings or buy more plants to increase our yield.
Well, that's all for this Sunday afternoon.  It's been quite active this weekend and probably will stay that way for another month or two if the weather holds.  Hopefully by next week, I will be able to report on my progress of getting sunflower seeds from the plants we have along our driveway.  Until then, happy gardening everyone!