Cleaning Up the Garden with Two More Watermelons Picked

Well I decided that today was a good day to start cleaning up the garden and start removing all my corn stalks, sunflowers, and many vine plants such as cucumbers and cantaloupes.  I like to do this before the cold weather and temperatures arrive.

I also did pick a couple of watermelons today that were finally ready after a couple of months of growing.  There is still one more which I plan on picking in the next couple of weeks hopefully.  Once I pick the last melon then it should be time for picking my fall crop.

I started the day by first digging out my corn stalks, sunflower stalks, and cucumber vines.  It doesn’t take that long and it only takes about a couple of hours to do it all.  It was a cooler day and made it more comfortable to do all this work.

Here are the cucumber and cantaloupe vines that were ready to be removed from the garden.

Once I finished with all of this I then focused my attention on two of my watermelons that were ready to be picked.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to pick them today, but the vine came off while I was pulling up my cucumbers which happened to be near one of the watermelon plants.  They were ready for harvesting anyways which is good that the vine came off.

The first one weighed 16 1/2 pounds and the bottom one weighed exactly 18 pounds.  Definitely decent sizes and will probably last a little while due to their large size.  The good news is that as long as they are in a cool place or inside of a refrigerator they should stay fresh for a long time.

The only plants that are left are my fall crop which I should be picking very soon as well.  I also have a watermelon and a few peppers that are growing.  My peppers are slowing down their production of flowers and buds, but they still have some peppers that need to be picked.