Captive Cantaloupe

Not much new is happening on the home front.  One of the main activities continues to be the garden and all things associated with it.  It may be a matter of wishful thinking at this early stage in the process, but I have begun researching various canning and pickling processes that I want to try if and when I get some veggies later this fall.

It is a bit of a struggle to grow things this time of year with the extreme heat and high winds, as well as some unexpected thunder storms several weeks ago.  The pepper plants in particular are showing the stress of these non-ideal conditions--plus the stress of my good intentions but poor treatment due to my inexperience.  I have especially been agonizing over whether I am watering them too much or too little.

Although I look at them multiple times a day, I was surprised to see how much the plants had grown when I looked at before and after pictures this morning.

Garden on Fourth of July

On July 4 the pepper plants were newly staked to help them stand up to the wind, but they reached to less than half of the above ground height of the stakes or less than 18 inches.  The tomatoes were also doing fine, but small.

This morning--July 14

As of this morning at least one of the pepper plants is two feet tall and one of the tomato plants (Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato) is already taller than one of the shorter pepper plants.  Despite their droopy leaves, I guess the plants are doing better than I thought.

However, the biggest difference is in the size of the cantaloupe plant.  It started out under one cage to protect it from the neighborhood bunnies.  After it quickly outgrew that cage, I replaced it with a larger and taller cage (another inverted old wire shelf). The original cage was next to it to block the large opening on one side.  Even this larger cage was very quickly too small.

Overnight growth of the cantaloupe through the cage

Last night the cantaloupe leaves were all inside the cage and not that close to the edge.  This morning the end of the vine had grown enough that the new leaves that had developed overnight were outside the cage.  These garden cages are clearly no longer sufficient for this cantaloupe plant, which has world domination, or at least garden domination, on its mind. 

The next step up was a 2' x 2' by 18" high cage made from pvc coated "poultry netting", the official name for what I and probably 99% of the rest of the world call "chicken wire".  I found the pvc coated chicken wire on the web and FedEx delivered it earlier this week.  This morning I cut the roll into the appropriate sizes with tin snips and wired everything together with zip ties.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was not hard to cut and the pvc coating made it relatively easy to handle.  Chicken wire has a bad reputation for being nasty to work with.  That was not the case with this stuff.  I didn't even have to use gloves.

Finished chicken wire cage over cantaloupe plant

This is the first of multiple garden cages, although the others will likely be much smaller.  My plan is to protect the plants while they are small from the rabbits.  Hopefully by the time the plants outgrow their respective cages, they will be less interesting to the bunnies. 

We have not seen the rabbits in the yard recently, but we assume they are around since we have seen more this year than anytime since we have lived in Texas.  We walk about 3.5 miles each morning on one of two loops through the neighborhood.  In the past two weeks we have seen at least one rabbit every day and as many as six, although a total of 3-4 is more typical.  They are not grouped together in one location.  If we are seeing this many as we walk through the neighborhood, I can't imagine how many are actually out there.

By the way, rabbits are not the only critters we see.  The rabbits are usually too far away for a picture, but we did encounter a large (at least it seemed large to us) snapping turtle along the edge of the sidewalk on one of our recent walks.  You can't tell from this picture, but his shell was over a foot long.  We did not get too close, but I expected him to retract into his shell when we got closer.  Instead he turned toward us.  According to this educational video, snapping turtles cannot pull their legs into their shell. 

Turtle next to the sidewalk.

The birds are too numerous to count, but Mississippi kites are frequent right now.  We even see the occasional waterfowl.

Ducks in the median

It is clear there is no shortage of wildlife in the area and most of them are hungry.  A Facebook group I follow, North Texas Vegetable Gardeners, has had reports of many different critters helping themselves to garden produce including squirrels and birds attacking the tomatoes and opossums eating the cantaloupe.   I just hope I can keep them out of my garden.