Isn't it a little late for melons?

 I've continued struggling with the soil conditions over the past two weeks, and have managed to get about half of the soil loosened and watered enough to plant.  I found some garden gloves, and without any intervention on my part, the ants are mysteriously all but gone from my plot. There's some question as to what I should be planting right now, though.  I'm on the opposite end of my traditional growing season, and in a different climate.  Back home, I'd plant a fall garden: cool weather crops like kale, lettuce, peas, broccoli, maybe one last round of carrots, some quick or non-fussy crops like radishes, and garlic for harvest in May or June.  I won't be here in June, so garlic is off the list for now.  It's also not especially cool yet.  The daytime temperatures still hover around 90, and on Monday (October 1, for those of you keeping score at home) there's a predicted high of 104.  Yowza!  In Massachusetts, that would be considered summer weather.

After planting lettuce, sunflowers, and
spinach (left) and melons (hill on right)

Based on that, I decided to try some summer crops this September, moving into fall crops as cooler weather arrives in mid-October or November.  I ordered a bunch of things from Seed Savers Exchange, a seed-saving organization of which I'm a member.  I ended up with blue jade corn, two inch strawberry popcorn, Taiyo sunflowers, gold medal tomatoes, Cheyenne bush pumpkins, and Romanesco broccoli, and Seed Savers threw in a packet of speckled paste tomatoes and boule d'or melons as well.  I also had some leftovers kicking around from my summer garden back home: royalty purple pod string beans, provider string beans, green arrow peas, merveille des quatre saisons butterhead lettuce, and Bloomsdale spinach.  And don't forget the chiles: Thai hot peppers, mustard habañeros, chocolate habañeros, serranos, and Pearl peppers, a genetically unique varietal I received from another Seed Savers member.  I have a lot to choose from.

So far I have planted spinach, lettuce, sunflowers, melons, corn (blue jade only, for now), both tomatoes, and pumpkins.  In playing this guessing game, I don't think I've come up with all correct answers though.  I met my garden plot neighbor to the left last week, and when I told her what I was planting, she said, "Huh, isn't it a little late for melons?" I honestly had no idea if it was late for melons, so I shrugged and said, "Maybe, I guess we'll see."  I waited anxiously for a few days--I'm always convinced I've killed everything by planting it wrong until it finally comes up--and I discovered that apparently it's not too late for melons, since they germinated.  My city is in zone 9, so I don't have to worry too much about frost, although it does get cold at night in the winter months.  Maybe I'll make little blankets for the plants.

Sunflower seedlings 9/24

The only other thing that has germinated besides the melons is the sunflowers.  The seeds I saved from that sunflower head have come in with gusto, including in places where I didn't intend to plant them.  I've transplanted most of the volunteer sunflowers to more suitable locations.  However, today I discovered some more volunteers: carrots.  As I was digging up the old carrot plants, clumps of seeds shook loose and buried themselves in the dirt.  Now, with the watering and warm soil temperature, they're coming up everywhere.  I think I'm just going to go with it--leave them where they are, thin them in a week or so where there are too many, and work around it.  I had a whole garden plan drawn up, and carrots are not part of it, but only because I didn't buy the seeds, not because I dislike them.  Now I'm just waiting for the seeds I planted to germinate.