Married to the soil in Abingdon VA

Heather here, riding the community garden high.

This week has not held a lot of interaction with participants, other than a few more garden maps and crop quality surveys I've received in the mail. At our last workshop we went over crop rotation and garden mapping and planning, and I gave each participant a stamped envelope and a piece of graph paper, asking them to map their gardens and mail me the design. I will be visiting some more gardens tomorrow as well, and hopefully collecting more pictures and video footage.

It rained so much for so long that the soil is just beginning to dry out today. Consequently, we spent today weeding and mulching pathways. It is definitely one of the more pleasurable things in life to see a well-weeded pathway.

I thank our steadfast volunteer, Nora, for this. It was pretty out of control before!

We found a few baseball bats--little guys that took off with all the rain:

In other news, our watermelon patch is still going strong. The third succession is sprouting up. Watermelon seeds are so funny looking!

Cotyledon--the embryonic leaves. Our 3rd succession is coming right along...will we get melons before it gets too frosty? Will covering with reemay help? Will the melons suddenly learn to love the cold? Only time will tell. 

 I've been reading up on different ways to use the rind and seeds...in some countries such as India and the Philippines people have traditionally sprinkled the seeds on baked goods or made a sweet melon seed paste, and used the rinds in anyway imaginable..I'm going to look more into it and see if any of these recipe ideas might be keepers...I love the idea of using the whole entire fruit but am not sure if I'd want to eat a fried melon rind or a melon rind salad...maybe. When I first started googling the idea I came across some potentially useful information:

Why cant you eat the black seeds in watermelon?

• 

  Get out of here baby cuke! This is about watermelon! Oh well, you're cute. And pokey. 
• Juliaaaa...
  

  you definitly can.
  it just isnt as good for your body.
  it pushes your digestive to work harder to digest them if you have to many.
  they are chewy and not to apitizing.
  they really wont grow a watermellon in your belly.
  so you can eat them,
  its just a all around better choice not to!

  Source(s):

  my brain!

  • 4 years ago
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• Enicma31...

  you can. however, it may not be very comfortable because it will cause you to grow a watermelon in your belly. no one wants that. your best bet is to spit them out... unless you like to live dangerously...

  • 4 years ago
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I haven't decided if I want to live dangerously or not.

I better decide soon though because the melons are taking over!

Our 1st Succession. The Second Succession you can kind of see right next to it. 

Well, that's all for now all you wonderful growers and plant appreciators.