“This place is a mess!” These were the first words that my dad uttered when I opened up one of my greenhouses to him a couple of weeks ago. But before I opened up my mouth in rebuttal, I looked around with a critical eye and had to admit, the space seemed chaotic.
On one side, I had planted 3 rows of habanero peppers, some of them beginning to turn a deep shade of red. Running between and underneath them, I had planted watermelon, cucumbers and cantaloupe. On the other side of the greenhouse was half a row of Rainbow Tuscan kale and half a row of Green Salad Bowl lettuce. Both had overwintered from last year and had sent up mighty spikes of seedpods. Dotted here and there were volunteer coriander and magenta spreen plants that were left for seed saving.
Yes, it certainly was chaos, but it was a huge miracle that anything had grown at all! I have a huge challenge growing in this particular greenhouse in the summertime. While greens and seedlings love it in the shoulder season from October to April, as soon as warm weather arrives, temperatures spike in this particular space. Even with the sides rolled up, it can get over 40 degrees Celsius.
One of the big challenges is finding plants that can withstand these temperatures. I’ve found that tomatoes and tomatillos loved it last year but weeding amongst them was tough. That’s where I came up with the idea of using the melons and cukes as a ground cover – an idea borrowed from permaculture principles. The pepper/melon combo seemed to work really well.
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Watermelon growing under habanero plant
So, the very fact that there were plants that were surviving and thriving in the space made me smile. So, instead of arguing with dad, I snipped off one of the peppers and told him to try it at home when he had some milk and bread handy.
Yesterday, I cut open one of the first watermelons (Sugar Baby) to reveal a deep red interior filled with sweet flesh and a fair number of seed. I don’t know if they would have ripened in any other space on the farm. We made a game out of spitting the seeds into a bowl so that I could save them for next year. The rest of the melons went into our CSA box for customers who have supported us all season.
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Sweet success
And dad? Well, he might still think the way I organized the greenhouse space is “messy” but he called the other day to thank me for the pepper. “It was the hottest thing I’d ever tasted. I loved it”! Thanks dad.
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