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WE Finally Got It Right! Harvesting Melons, Sunflowers & a Strawberry Surprise

This Video is from the Youtube channel: “Homegrown Passion”. 

🍈 Are our melons FINALLY ready to harvest? Today we're harvesting melons, harvesting sunflower seeds, and discovering a surprise late-season strawberry harvest here at Homegrown Passion!

After months of growing, experimenting, and occasionally getting things completely wrong 😂, it's finally harvest time on the farm.

We’re starting in the melon patch, where our cantaloupes and honeydew definitely didn’t grow the way we originally planned. The vines abandoned our trellis and took over the ground instead — but they still produced some beautiful melons! This time, I’m looking closely at the signs that tell us when a cantaloupe is actually ripe and ready to pick, including color, smell, and whether it naturally slips from the vine.

And yes… there may be a little professional melon sniffing involved. 😉🍈

🌻 Then we're harvesting our giant sunflower heads and getting them ready to dry. I'll show you some of the signs I use to decide when a sunflower is mature enough to harvest, how we're drying the heads, and why I'm saving the sunflower seeds for a much bigger experiment next year.

If everything works, some of the seeds inside these sunflower heads could become part of a whole new section of the farm next season!

🐰 Of course, farming never goes exactly according to plan. Something has been enjoying our melon plants almost as much as we have, so we also have a little bunny problem to deal with before there’s nothing left to protect.

🍓 And just when I thought the growing season was beginning to slow down, our Albion strawberries had another surprise for us.

The cooler weather has given these day-neutral strawberries a second wind, and they're producing gorgeous, sweet berries again. These are some of our customers' favorites at the farmers market — and you'll see why when I taste one right off the plant!

This is one of those days I love on the farm: melon harvest, sunflower harvest, strawberry harvest, a little problem solving, a few surprises…and hopefully the beginning of something we'll get to grow together next year. ❤️

🌱 MORE FROM HOMEGROWN PASSION

If you'd like more growing information, printable gardening guides, hydroponic growing tips, behind-the-scenes farm content, and a little extra fun with me, come join our Homegrown Passion community on Patreon:

patreon.com/homegrownpassion

Thank you so much for watching, commenting, and being part of our farm adventures. I love sharing what works, what doesn't, and everything we learn along the way.

❤️ Katy

#MelonHarvest #SunflowerHarvest #StrawberryHarvest #Gardening #HomegrownPassion

00:00 Are My Melons Finally Ripe?
01:06 What Happened to Our Melon Trellis?
02:05 How to Tell When Cantaloupe Is Ripe
03:04 How to Tell When Honeydew Is Ripe
04:06 Protecting the Melon Patch
05:04 Harvesting Giant Sunflowers
05:53 When Are Sunflowers Ready to Harvest?
08:36 Drying & Saving Sunflower Seeds
09:28 Will Hybrid Sunflower Seeds Grow?
09:56 The Bunny Problem
10:44 Our Temporary Garden Fence
14:38 The Finished Bunny Fence
15:39 Our Strawberries Are Back!
16:02 Growing Albion Strawberries
17:02 Our Hydroponic Strawberry System
17:24 Why Cooler Weather Helps Strawberries
18:18 The Late-Summer Harvest Payoff