Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 57 Entries. Thursday, January 5 View Page This winter is too warm. That is all.   Monday, January 16 View Page What a boring winter so far, I usually track snowstorms in the winter off season, there have been none so far...   Friday, February 17 View Page 2 weeks until I can start some giant cabbage, and eggplant from seed. At least I will have something to do finally, this was a really boring winter for tracking winter storms, because there was not a single one.   Sunday, February 19 View Page If it stays this warm I think there will be a bad spring freeze.   Sunday, February 26 View Page 3 days until I start some giant cabbage and regular eggplant.   Friday, March 2 View Page Looks like it is going to be too wet this year too, hopefully it dries up at one point between now and May so everything gets tilled.   Sunday, March 18 View Page I was feeling sick for a minute today, I thought I lost my 239 Leonard seeds but they were just in a bubble pack I forgot about. Now I feel better. lol   Sunday, March 18 View Page Well I though today would be a start of a dry trend, but it rained again near 1" not supposed to rain for 4-5 days now but it probably will. Winter rye is growing like crazy. Still about 30 days for it to dry out before it becomes an issue.   Tuesday, March 27 View Page Starting pepper, and tomato seeds this weekend. Eggplant and cabbage I started indoors a month ago look good so far, they have been outside most of the time. Had to bring them in for the cold last night. Still about a month until I start watermelon.   Saturday, March 31 View Page Growing 5 different types of watermelon this year, should be interesting. Also got some Texas tomato cages, I refuse to have a tomato grow on the ground and get fungus again. I would grow pumpkins if I could grow like 5, but I could only grow one and that is way to much stress to handle. lol   Friday, April 6 View Page Finally dry garden will be tilled Saturday or Sunday.   Wednesday, April 11 View Page lol   Sunday, April 15 View Page One of my 7.33 hunt tomato seeds is completely stuck inside the seed coat, it better come off. It has been stuck for 3 days, the other 7.33 hunt plant I have is fine and growing well.   Wednesday, April 25 View Page I tried Amelio's seed starting method, maybe he was on to something. No pectobacterium carotovorum present.   Friday, April 27 View Page The 2 239 Leonard seeds I got for free both germinated, the 2 255 Mitchell seeds I payed for both rotted. Go figure. lol I only have space for 2 so it is not too bad. I am germinating a 234 Edwards, 260 Clementz, and another 239 Leonard as backups.   Saturday, April 28 View Page Get to plant vegetable plants tomorrow, 67 tomorrow and then 70s and maybe 80s for the next week or two. 2 weeks early I will see how it will turn out. They will be on black plastic on a raised bed. It will be a week or so before I get to plant watermelon, they don't seem to do anything until the soil is very warm and it is not a raised area.   Friday, May 4 View Page I finally found some older ghost pepper plants at a nursery today, when I got home I saw that I got an email from another grower that saw some in another nursery and wanted to know if I wanted some. lol Kind of ironic.   Monday, May 7 View Page I hope my watermelon plants don't literally become water melon plants tonight, it is pouring outside and the rain is moving extremely slowly on the radar.   Monday, May 7 View Page Maybe it will drown some of the bugs. lol   Wednesday, May 9 View Page Rabbits ate all my broccoli, and a few leaves on my giant cabbage,   Wednesday, May 9 View Page I am going to grow a LG on a mulberry tree that I let grow to form a natural trellis it is in a bad place and would eventually need to be cut down if it got big, I had my mom cut it at the base and now I will see how well lg will grow on it.   Wednesday, May 16 View Page Cucumber beetles already?   Wednesday, May 16 View Page Cucumber beetles were feasting on my regular watermelon plants, they were all different types so they only ate some of them. Permeation was applied. They did not bother giant watermelons they are still in hoop house.   Thursday, May 17 View Page A majority of the regular watermelon plants died, the cucumber beetles must have damaged them to much before I noticed. I am going to direct sow, and start seeds in pots for the regular watermelon this time. I will not uncover them until they are bigger than 2 or 3 leaves.   Tuesday, May 22 View Page Weather looks good for watermelon plants, they are still in hoops so it should be in the mid 90s during the day in them with upper 70s at night. Dry weather should keep weeds and fungus away.   Sunday, May 27 View Page I put row covers on my giant cabbage to keep loppers out. But a cutworm was in the soil and climbed up and was eating the leaves. The soil has landscape fabric on it. That means it crawled up through the tiny hole where the plant comes out of the ground. Plants should be fine, but bugs really want to eat my cabbage.   Tuesday, May 29 View Page Today is the 15th day without rain, there was a 90% chance today. Looks like it could make it up to 20 days without rain. At least there won't be any weeds this summer.   Sunday, June 3 View Page They keep on saying on the news what great weather we have. lol It is not great it is 50 at night and it is slowing my watermelon plants down.   Monday, June 11 View Page Rain !   Monday, June 11 View Page Today I saw the most pathetic rain I have ever seen. It took all day to get a grand total of 0.08 in. 1 inch was forecast.   Monday, June 11 View Page The plus to this is that dry ground heats up easier and the summer will likely end up with above average temperatures, every degree counts when you are trying to get the 300 lb watermelon.lol Also there are barely any bugs.   Thursday, June 14 View Page Watermelon growing weather. lol   Sunday, June 17 View Page I applied a foliar fertilizer in my vegetable garden last night, I accidentally used too high of a concentration. It burned the plants, the should look fine in a week but still it is not nice to wake up in the morning to fried plants. I did not use it on my giant watermelons so they are fine.   Monday, June 18 View Page Only got 0.25 in of rain.lol Most areas say 1 inch, some even 3 or 4 inches. One stormed missed me by a half mile or so. At least I am not in that area of Indiana that has only had a inch total the last 60 days. it could be worse.   Wednesday, June 20 View Page One of my watermelon plants was growing slower, it is only 2 ft long. Today I found an egg sized watermelon on it. I will check every time I am out there now. The plants will most likely not be big enough until early/mid july. A 2ft vine will not grow that big of a melon. lol One of the other vines is about 5ft and growing fast with a few side vines. I am going to let the plants get huge before I let them set anything.   Wednesday, June 20 View Page I would post some pictures of the patch but there is a plastic mulch problem. The weeds grew under it and pushed it up it looks like a giant pillowcase. It will be fixed soon.   Thursday, June 21 View Page wow   Friday, June 22 View Page Probably only going to have a inch or rain total for the month which is about 25% of normal. Good for keeping fungus away though. Got 0.02 in this morning.lol   Wednesday, June 27 View Page I guess this is a good year to grow giant watermelon, almost perfect weather coming up.   Thursday, June 28 View Page Well the weather switched from California weather to Texas weather. Watermelons should think they are in Texas and grow faster they started slow but really started to get going. I could not imagine any better weather to grow the WR in. lol   Sunday, July 1 View Page 80mph winds 3 days ago around the entire state, knocked out power. Estimated to come back on July 7th. Power is on at my dads office that is why I am able to write this. Watermelon plants are all fine, they got twisted around into a jumbled mess though. 95 all week so good for the melons near 100 again next weekend, but bad if you don't have air conditioning. lol   Wednesday, July 18 View Page Rained 0.34in two days ago, and about 0.25in today about 1.00 a mile or two east. lol Better than nothing, more possible tomorrow.   Sunday, July 29 View Page Finally have some normal looking melons growing, doubt they have time to grow anything over 150 lbs but maybe I will get a pleasant surprise.   Wednesday, August 1 View Page I finally have a good melon growing, perfect long shape. It is open pollinated between 5 - 8 days old. Of course the ones I had a controlled cross on aborted or had BER. I have been spraying calcium every night and have applied cal nitrate.   Friday, August 3 View Page I might grow pumpkins again not next summer but maybe the following one, but only if I can find someone who can help with the manual labor burying, pruning ext since it is impossible for me to do.. that is a big if though. Maybe I can find another location to grow also so I don't have to subject my family to the craziness of pumpkin growing. Or maybe I will just find another hobby in the next 2 years so I don't have to do all that. lol   Sunday, August 5 View Page Melon patch, giant watermelon is in white tents. The ones in the background are regular melons 6 different types.   Sunday, August 5 View Page Giant pear gourd #1   Sunday, August 5 View Page Giant pear #2   Sunday, August 5 View Page Ghost pepper I started from seed, the one I bought must have been mislabeled because it is a ornamental pepper.   Tuesday, August 7 View Page What a wide range of rainfall in the last week in the Ohio valley. I have only had about <30% of normal rainfall, and some areas are at 600% above normal! That is crazy.   Friday, August 10 View Page I really messed up with the giant melons this year, the fall soil test said nutrients were excessive so I did not add manure. Last winter especially December was really wet I think it must have washed most of the nutrients out of the soil, another issue I think I have had this year is after I had the winter rye tilled in it stopped raining and I only watered a small are right around the plants. When it did rain I got a thick crust on top of the soil. I think the nitrogen in the soil got locked up in the winter rye. The other patch that I added manure to is doing fine the only problem is that they are regular melons. I think I may still beat my pb.   Saturday, August 11 View Page I will have seeds available from the Giant Pear Gourds as soon as I get them dried this fall. Email me at Nicptrkwsk@gmail.com if you want any. I have a third one growing so I should have a lot of seeds.   Sunday, August 12 View Page A stupid mouse bit off about 30% of my giant watermelon vine, the melon was not attached but now it will not get that big. I guess when it rains it pours. What a terrible year. Maybe I should paint one of my gourds like a melon and take that to the weigh-off. lol I will be starting college the 22nd so I guess I won't have time to care about it soon.   Friday, September 7 View Page The giant melon plant died a week or two ago, the melon was only 20lbs it looks like. I had terrible luck this year from the start, and also I grew too many plants which was hard to maintain. Next year I will downsize significantly to just one vegetable garden, with a giant melon plant or two. I will do better if I concentrate my efforts.   Tuesday, October 9 View Page Soon....   Tuesday, October 9 View Page Sadly those gourds are bigger than the watermelon I failed to grow.lol   Monday, November 12 View Page Pear gourds are taking forever to dry, I might be February before I get them totally dried out. If anyone else would like some seeds just email me.