QUESTION OF THE WEEK
How can I tell if watermelons or cantaloupes are ripe?
Answer: With watermelons, you look at a couple of things. First of all, if it’s sitting on the ground you can look at the ground spot, that spot where it sits on the ground and loses its color there. It will change from a greenish, or puce-type color to more of a creamy color. That’s a sign that it’s ripe.
Then the tendril, adjacent to where the vine attaches to the melon. There’s a little
curlicue there, and as it dries up, that’s another sign that the melon is probably ripe. And finally there’s the thump test. Now different sizes of melons sound different, but once you get familiar with the variety, you can tell pretty well by thumping. It should have sort of a hollow sound.
With cantaloupes, we also look at where the cantaloupe attaches to the vine. It’ll start to break away. We call that slipping. The little belly button end, where the vine attaches, will crack loose about three-fourths of the way around, and that’s about the time you can pick that cantaloupe. If you leave it on too long, it gets a little bit mealy, but it’s not a magical, have-to-pick it this day type thing. You’ve got a week or so of leeway in there.
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PLANT OF THE WEEK
White Butterfly Ginger
(Hedychium)
They come in many different forms, but my favorite type is the plain old white version. It’s extremely fragrant. If you’ve ever appreciated the smell of a gardenia, Butterfly ginger is at least that fragrant if not more. It will fill up a whole room.
These bloom in the summer and late fall until the first frost. White butterfly ginger is fairly hardy for our area. If you mulch it, it comes back just fine. It doesn’t like sun, so you need to provide it a shady spot, like under a live oak. It also wants a little extra water. The foliage, 4-6’ tall, is a wonderful vertical texture to the shade garden.
There are other types of butterfly ginger that have coral or orange blooms that are very beautiful but not as fragrant as the white.
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PLANTING TIPS OF THE WEEK
- Cut back on fertilizing woody ornamentals that are cold tender. That includes figs. Setting these plants up to push new foliage endangers them for cold damage. Keep them adequately watered but let them wean off too much water.
- Give a final haircut (shear back by about a third) and fertilizer application to warm season flowers to keep them going until the first frost.
- Plant green beans. Plant squash if you do it right away.
- Prepare the soil to plant our fall/winter crops. Add compost and a slow-release fertilizer, to be ready to set them out in the next few weeks.
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THIS WEEK'S FEATURE
Meet the dinosaurs that once called Texas home, along with prehistoric plants from The Great Outdoors for today’s gardens.
The Great Outdoors prehistoric plant list
Ginkgo biloba
bald cypress
Fern ‘Silver Lady’
Wollemi pine
Cardboard palm (Zamia furfuracea)
Cycad (sago palm)
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