So I posted somewhere (but can't guarantee it was on ATP) that last winter, I buried my kitchen scraps in the beds I had dug between my trees. I mulched over those beds this spring with wood chips from when a neighbor had some trees taken down, and that kept the weeds to a minimum.
I was really shocked to come home from a couple weeks away on busines, and see MELON VINES growing on top the mulch in the bed between the trees. They were blooming, and there were some tiny fruit there, so I figured I'd watch and wait.
Tonight, I picked two fresh, ripe, fragrant canteloupe from next to my young magnolia. They're sitting in the kitchen, waiting for me to come down from this euphoric high. The last time I tried to grow canteloupe (key word might be *tried*), I wound up with a softball sized fruit. Sure, it tasted good, but it was only ONE fruit, and that was as big as it got.
This year, I didn't plant any fruits/veggies, and I have 2 decent sized melons in the kitchen, another canteloupe on the vine, and at least one honeydew (I think it's a 'dew) growing out there as well. All I did was bury my compost bucket in the plant bed.
Let's hear it for the joys of benign neglect!
(and let's hope the holes I saw in one melon don't go all the way through it)
cantaloupe!
I always have some kind of volunteer pumpkin, squash or other type of vine growing around the edge of my compost pile.
(who were remarkably uninterested in the brown rat that found its way into mt house last fall)
