Enjoyable Island Gardening

Greetings from the island everyone. Hope all of you are doing well, and please don’t forget your dad on Fathers Day next Sunday. My plans are to spend the day with my dad, Henry, and will certainly enjoy our time together. The gardening skills I’ve developed are all due to learning them from my dad, and I continue to learn from him all the time.

Speaking of gardening, I’m gonna fall short of my goal to grow a three pound tomato this Spring season. I’m growing lots of “regular” tomatoes, grape and cherry size, and a beautiful Orange Blossom variety, having a deep bright orange color, but my Big Zac variety simply did not produce well. I did have one just over a pound, which is a nice tomato, but nowhere near my target weight. But of course I’ll keep on trying; maybe the Fall tomato garden will produce that Texas size whopper. I’d like to find out what our state record tomato is, that would be a nice goal to shoot for.

I’m late getting them in the ground, but this week I started my watermelon and cantaloupe seeds. I’ve had good luck the past few years growing melons here on the island, especially big sweet cantaloupes, so I’m hoping towards the end of the summer I’ll be enjoying some cold sweet melons in the shade.

The seaweed is really washing ashore thick on the beach right now, making it difficult to drive along the surf. It’s time to pull the trailer down there and bring a big load back to the house for composting. My four year old Compost Tumbler finally rusted out a few weeks ago, so I called the company and true to their 5-year warranty, they sent me a new one. Now I’ve just gotta put it together and start a new batch of compost. I do rinse the beach seaweed off with fresh water, but after loads and loads of composting it, the salt still remaining in it simply rusts out the galvanized barrel drum. With ten raised bed planting areas, even though the composter is 180 gallon capacity, I only end up with about 40% of finished and ready to use compost, so I need plenty of it.

The beach finds have been few and far between lately, picking up only some five gallon buckets and plastic containers that I can use for miscellaneous chores and to collect seaweed and dirt. You have to look closely to see what might be entangled in all the seaweed washing in on the beach, and once it stops, there might be some good finds exposed under the grass.

I can’t wait for the surf waters to clear up and turn their emerald green color so I can start wading the guts, hoping to pull in a few nice trout to fry up.

I want to thank islanders Charles and Joy for allowing me to help out with their hosting the Wounded Warriors Wives and their kids, a few weeks ago here on the island. With the help of Helicopter Mike and Crazy Ed, we hauled them to the beach for a few hours and then enjoyed a lunch that Joy had prepared. A wonderful day for a great cause.

Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and remember to call your dad next Sunday.