Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 48 Entries. Monday, July 7 View Page Time to post a few pics now that there is something to see. Here is the 239 Leonard plant. I'm calling it Little Scarface.   Tuesday, July 8 View Page The 229 Edwards with a young pollination going outside of its space. Man its been a tough year pollinating for me.   Tuesday, July 8 View Page Here is the 232 Barber (Weenie) with a possible young pollination going in a bad spot. This plant does not want to throw females for me. Since time is ticking away I went with the flow. We will see how things turn out   Tuesday, July 8 View Page Here is the 350 Kent. Its a grafted plant that a grower was kind enough to send me a spare he had. Thank you Tim Pennington!   Tuesday, July 8 View Page The 350 grafted plant is not thriving at all but it is throwing some really LONG melons. Right now I have 2 young polls going on it and they are pretty impressive. Here is baby 1   Tuesday, July 8 View Page This is baby 2   Tuesday, July 8 View Page My 3 giant tomatoes (I killed yours John Butler, so sorry!) next to my regular old eating tomatoes. I fuss with the giants and water them and I do nothing to the regular ones. Hmm   Tuesday, July 8 View Page My beautiful eating tomatoes. Did I ever tell you how much I love tomatoes?   Tuesday, July 8 View Page My patch is divided by a silt fence now to keep the deer out of the melon bed (hopefully) so here is the back side.   Tuesday, July 8 View Page And here's the front. Will try to update more as I have more to show you.   Tuesday, July 15 View Page Day 20 today for Little Scarface.   Wednesday, July 23 View Page Time for an update! Since I last posted, we put up a new machinery shed here at the farm. This is a photo of it on Day 2. I say if we didn't keep buying equipment, we wouldn't need a place to store it. My hubby doesn't agree with that for some reason.   Wednesday, July 23 View Page Today is Day 20 for the Weenie melon. It could not be growing in a worse spot, but I had issues getting a set to take ...so this is what I got. No name for this one yet. It will come to me one of these days   Wednesday, July 23 View Page Today is also Day 20 for the 229 Edwards. Boy this one is nice and tall. I have named her Lucille. I hope she gets as fat as her daddy!   Wednesday, July 23 View Page Here is my tomato patch. The plants are so nice this year since I moved them to the old pumpkin area. As you might notice, the barn is basically finished now and just needs gutters and concrete. Looks pretty good!   Wednesday, July 23 View Page Deep inside the foliage yesterday I found this beauty. This variety is called Malinovoe Chudo and is a open pollinated Russian commercial variety. It is also called Raspberry Miracle here in the US and seeds can be purchased at Double Helix Farms. It will be used to make today's lunch of BLTs and cottage cheese/tomatoes.   Thursday, July 24 View Page So after I posted pics yesterday I got quite a few emails asking me about my walking boards. I thought photos might work better than trying to explain how I take care of the plants and the walking boards. Once a week I have to go thru and clean off the walk boards as part of my plant maintenance. It is a lot more work but walking on leaves and vines and tripping and falling into the plants would not be good. Here is a before shot of a walk board   Thursday, July 24 View Page Afterwards, nice and clean. This is also a great time to check under the walk boards for stray culls. They sure love to hide under there and you might not notice at all until the board is not springy. Always a red flag there is a 30 lb cull holding it up ;)   Thursday, July 24 View Page After I get all the walk boards cleaned up I go around the outside of the bed. Anything hanging over gets snipped. Here is before   Thursday, July 24 View Page And after. Nice and clean.   Thursday, July 24 View Page Trash to be thrown away. This is from one plant. Andy S, I am sorry but Tom is having to spend the day in his pen since we have some guys here working on the barn. Pics of him tomorrow I hope.. but I gave him some walnuts and a couple of cherry tomatoes this morning to make him happy.   Thursday, July 24 View Page Looks like I forgot the photo with that last entry LoL   Tuesday, August 12 View Page Day 40 for Lucille. Really a nice tall melon.   Tuesday, August 12 View Page Day 41 on the 350 Kent grafted plant. LONG!   Tuesday, August 12 View Page Tom scratching out a mole hill in the yard. I tried to get an angle where you could see how long his beard is now, but he wasn't having any of that.   Tuesday, August 12 View Page My tomatoes are rocking this year. They must like the cooler weather. Here is my hubby peeking out from the foliage. Looking thrilled to have his photo taken ;)   Monday, August 25 View Page The past 2 weeks I have lost 2 melons to rotted stumps. I finally got around to weighing them today. Here they are prior to weighing. The 239 Leonard is on the left, and the 232 Barber on the right. I will not be saving seeds from either of these melons because I am not quite sure what caused the stump rot. So to be safe...no seeds will be saved.   Monday, August 25 View Page Here is the 239 Leonard. AKA Little Scarface. Swimming with the fishes now.   Monday, August 25 View Page My 232.5 Barber. This one was really moving along, too. Darnit anyway.   Monday, August 25 View Page The patch is looking a little bare now.   Monday, August 25 View Page Not quite out of the race just yet. Still have the beautiful 229 Edwards. AKA Lucille :) And Sally, which I will try to get a photo of tomorrow. Man it's HOT today!   Thursday, September 18 View Page Long Sally is ready to make the trip to Bear Wallow....   Friday, September 19 View Page Sorry to report that Long Sally has a small rotten spot on her bottom. Since it's a 4 hour drive to KY, we won't be making the trip for a possible DQ. Instead, I will enter her at my county fair and catch you all next year. I will miss you guys and good luck to all!   Wednesday, October 1 View Page Brought Long Sally home from the fair Sunday morning. Official fair weight: 187.5 lbs OTT: 99.5" circumference, 40" side to side, 59 1/8" end to end. Straight length 38 1/4" Light as crap.. as those long skinny melons are notorious for. I love her anyway :) First place at the fair. Best of show. Shout out to Tim Pennington for the grafted plant! This Saturday I will be taking Lucille to Hamilton, Ohio. Stay tuned ...   Friday, October 3 View Page Ready for Hamilton, Ohio and Operation Pumpkin tomorrow :) Wish me luck!   Monday, October 6 View Page An exciting weekend for me!! Here are a few photos from Operation Pumpkin. This is my buddy Kaylee weighing her weenie melon. 147 lbs!! Dad Jamie's weenie melon weighed in at 166 lbs. Great job to you both!   Monday, October 6 View Page Here are the top 3 pumpkins on display. Really cool to see pumpkins so big. Congrats to Bill Neptune, Jerry Rose, and Quinn Werner.   Monday, October 6 View Page Back to the melons :) Here is Stevann at the scale.   Monday, October 6 View Page The Amazing Mr Mudd. If you've ever met me, you know I ask a million questions of every grower I meet. Poor Frank gets the most questions of all. He deserves a medal for that. Or better yet, a grape soda and a bag of chips! I was so happy he came to the weigh off to cheer me on. Thanks a million Frank.   Monday, October 6 View Page Bill Neptune at the scale. Most people don't realize that Bill Neptune has broken the Ohio State watermelon record 3 times since he started growing melons and he broke it yet again Saturday. That's 4 state records in about 4 or 5 years time. He is a great grower and a great guy. Congrats Bill!   Monday, October 6 View Page Here I am at the scale, ear muffs and all. Lucille ended up weighing 296.5 lbs. New Ohio State record. Woohoo!   Monday, October 6 View Page Little bit closer view and no ear muffs this time. You can see here just how fat of a melon Lucille is. The cross is 229 Edwards x 239 Leonard. Official OTT measurements were 96 circumference, 55 side to side, 63 end to end. Total 214 inches.   Monday, October 6 View Page A shot of me and Bill with Lucille. Go Ohio! Someone took a pic of Frank and me with Lucille. If it was you, I would love to have a copy. Those of you who entered the Weenie contest, drop me an email and let me know what it weighed and a photo would be great to post here in my diary. We will announce the winner after all the weigh offs are over. That's all for now :)   Thursday, October 16 View Page Kroger asked to display my melon this week. Here is a pic of the display. How fun!   Monday, October 27 View Page Harvesting seeds. Here is the bottom of Lucille. Very few dent marks from the shelf.   Monday, October 27 View Page Here she is cut open. An air pocket .. but not too severe.   Monday, October 27 View Page The blossum end.   Saturday, November 15 View Page Check this out :)