Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 187 Entries. Friday, January 5 View Page I just watched this video this morning, it blew me away. So I thought I would share it with anyone who might be interested. Every successful giant pumpkin grower knows the importance of soil biology to plant health. Why should it be any different with human health? We need a diverse flora starting in our mouth and going through our gut etc. By using some of the products we use, we are often killing off the very microorganisms that our there to help us. THis video takes about an hour to watch, I know we are in a rush, rush society. I even had to force myself to sit through it because I know it is important. I would think nothing of it to sit through an hour long video about growing giant vegetables, rarely would I sit and take the time to watch an hour long video about human health. Our personal health is actually far more important (dare I say) than growing giant vegetables. Without your own personal health you aren't going to be able to grow much of anything. YouTube video   Wednesday, January 10 View Page I was in Newport Rhode Island in the beginning of December Newport is a great place to go if you like trees At the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century gardening was popular among the elite. Plant explorers were circling the globe in search of hardy plants that would grow in the USA uk France and other places in Europe. Everyone had to have the latest and greatest new cultivar or species. The plants were collected like trading cards. It was an exciting time in horticulture. The tree in the photo is a London plane tree which is a cross between the American sycamore and a Chinese species of sycamore. It is easy to distinguish the difference as the London plane bears its seed balls in clusters of two. The American sycamore “buttonballs” are born singly. usually the London planes are a cream colored mottling and Americans are a white mottling.   Wednesday, January 10 View Page Two massive dwarf Alberta spruce on the campus of Salve Regina university. These are probably fifteen to twenty feet tall proving that given enough time even dwarf trees can grow big. luckily they had plenty of room and were allowed to keep growing.   Wednesday, January 10 View Page When I used to work at a retail nursery people would come in and tell me “a tree grew out of my bush”. After asking a few questions I usually could figure out what they meant by that. In the picture you see the back side of one of the dwarf Alberta spruce. It has a regular looking spruce growing out of the tree this is called a reversion. The dwarf Alberta spruce cultivar is nothing more than a mutation. The reversion is the tree reverting back to its true self. If a gardener doesn’t cut out that reversion soon it will grow like gang busters and eventually the whole tree will need to be removed. If it is removed soon the tree will be fine and not have much of a dead spot.   Wednesday, January 10 View Page An English oak in full green leaves in early December.   Wednesday, January 17 View Page I haven’t been paying much attention to the weather this winter as it has been mild and super wet. I was watching the Kansas City chiefs play over the weekend and I was shocked to see how cold it was in Kansas City. I knew that weather was on its way here well it’s here now!!!!   Friday, January 26 View Page Not too much going on in the garden. I planted purple top turnips as a cover crop. They always do great and also provide some food or animal feed. They seem to be much more freeze tolerant than the daikon radishes which are already soft these turnips are still hard and edible. We had a couple nights around nine degrees yet they are still good   Tuesday, February 6 View Page Last week my son had shoulder surgery in Hartford I had some time to blow so I went to one of my favorite parks. The Elizabeth park rose garden. This place is gorgeous in June. Many people get married there. Such a beautiful place. Even in the middle of winter.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page Another angle of the rose garden.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page A weeping blue atlas cedar arbor.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page A hellebore getting ready to flower.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page One of the greenhouses at Elizabeth park.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page A ver large mature sour wood tree, Oxydendron arboreum   Tuesday, February 6 View Page This is a normal branch from a chamaecyparis obtusa ‘nana gracilis’. (Dwarf hinoki false cypress) in the next entry you will see a branch where the tree is reverting back to its true form.   Tuesday, February 6 View Page You can see two different looking types of foliage if you look closely one is the correct type for the nana gracillis cultivar the other is normal for the species. When you are dealing with horticultural mutations you always have to be on the look out for them being unstable and reverting back to there true type. Some mutations are more stable than the others.   Thursday, February 8 View Page Rampart gourds. These dried up nice, I just left them outside. Simple. It is getting close to melon starting time, I will have to get the seeds out soon   Tuesday, February 13 View Page After several neatly snowless winters we got a big snowstorm today. We just got 14 inches. It is a winter wonderland outside. For those of you in warm climates who have never experienced this, everything is quiet and still and it is like waking up to a different world.   Tuesday, February 13 View Page Another shot of the snow. It has been an easy winter so far and there is no frost in the ground so this will make for a big clean up come spring.   Tuesday, February 13 View Page Another shot of the snow. It has been an easy winter so far and there is no frost in the ground so this will make for a big clean up come spring.   Monday, February 19 View Page I still have two 146.5 young seeds. Maybe I will grow these in their own roots in some new soil   Tuesday, March 5 View Page It's still winter, and not much going on yet in the garden so I thought that I would take the time to brag about and share this little "trophy" of mine. About ten or so years ago the good folks who make "Lucky Charms" cereal had a contest to win a very special box of cereal. It was a box of lucky charms with nothing but marshmallows. .. no cereal at all in the box. All you had to do was cut out the UPC symbol on the box and mail it to the general mills company, the winners would be chosen at random. If you were one of the lucky ones who got chosen, you would receive a box of this very special collectable cereal. There were only a couple thousand boxes that were to be given out. Well I eagerly clipped the upc symbol off the box and mailed it in.... nothing happened for months, I didn't give it much thought, I just assumed I hadn't won. Then one day in what seemed like a year later this box shows up in the mail with a special certificate. That day was surely one of the greatest days of my life, right up there with my wedding day and birth of my kids.   Monday, March 11 View Page Back in the 90s when I was in college at UConn for horticulture and also doing an internship at the Arnold Arboretum. It was known that hard to grow plants would need a pinch of soil taken from the mother plant in doing this you would inoculate the new plant with the essential soil biology that these plants need to grow the ericaceous plants are like this. they need very specific mycorrhizae that are unique to that family. They will often struggle without the proper microbiology, this family includes rhododendron, blueberry mountain, Laurel, Heath, and Heather this product is supposed to help inoculate them.   Monday, March 11 View Page Here are the active ingredients. Hopefully this stuff helps to get my new blueberry plants off to a good start. Back in those early days when I was first starting out in horticulture I never realized that vegetable crops like pumpkins etc could also could benefit from mycorrhizae. So much has been discovered and there is so much more left to be discovered. The more we kno, the more we realize we have so much more to know.   Thursday, March 14 View Page Tillage radish all winter killed. I think it dies at 15 degrees or so.   Thursday, March 14 View Page Purple top turnip is still alive. I think they die around ten degrees or so   Thursday, March 14 View Page Purple top turnip is still alive. I think they die around ten degrees or so   Thursday, March 14 View Page The season has begun in the high tunnel. Lettuce, potatoes,cabbage, broccolli snow peas, carrots and kale   Sunday, March 17 View Page Imagine tending a garden that had to be weeded and cared for year round for decades with out stop. You would want to find a way to help make managing that garden easier. Well for Ken D (Owner/cofounder of bp.com) he has a situation that is like tending a garden year round. Keeping this site free from bots is a daily chore for him. He has told me he gets hundreds of bots trying to infiltrate this site daily. He was his ways of Identifying and weeding them out and keeping the "weeds" from gaining a foothold here on bp.com. This endeavor takes up Ken's time every day. We can help Ken manage this site by paying the small $15 per year premium member fee. Once someone pays the premium member fee it identifies them as "not a bot". Ken told me "bots will never pay". If you are a regular user of this site I ask you to consider becoming a premium member. It will help Ken manage the site and it will also help offset the costs to run the Mainframe server and all the other costs Ken incurs like the electricity and commercial grade wifi. Over the past year I have gotten to know Ken personally and I know he isn't the type of person that like's to toot his own horn or ask people for anything. That is why I felt the need to say this and let you all know.   Sunday, March 17 View Page Speaking of the internet being a "weedy" place got me thinking about a skit Dave Chappelle made over twenty years ago. Called "What if the internet was a real place?" Over twenty years later things really haven't changed much, perhaps you could argue that things have gotten worse because the real con artists don't "Pop Up", they prefer to stay out of sight. Go to the 1:27 mark if you want to just watch the part about the internet. YouTube video   Tuesday, March 19 View Page These melons just came out of the grafting dome. Check out the roots growing off of the stem. The bushel gourds and rampart didn’t do this. Only the’ tetsukabuto’ squash rootstock did. I guess I don’t have to feel so bad about letting them get so leggy.   Monday, April 1 View Page I couldn’t resist, I was at agway last week and they had a bunch of hellebores (Lenten rose). I have wanted one for a while. I couldn’t resist, It was an impulse buy. lol   Sunday, April 14 View Page It is funny how dogmatic and also pragmatic gardeners often are, it drives me nuts. WHat I mean by that is when you talk to gardeners they always know the "right" way to do something, and in their minds it has to be done that way or else it will fail and won't be right. We probably should be the least dogmatic and pragmatic out of all professions as the more we know and the more experienced we become we should realize that there is more we don't know than we do know. There is nothing set in stone, and there are many ways to accomplish our goals if we ask ourselves questions. Like... Why do I have to do it that way? What is the purpose of doing it that way? What are the results of doing it that way? Could we achieve the same result with another way? Yet we insist on carving out all these rules and regulations and laws for doing what we do. When much of it is unneccesary. We need to think about what we are doing and why we are doing it, and that means we have to stick our necks out and try things that others aren't trying. Do things that others aren't doing. And when they fail which they often do, we have to be OK with it. We are all so different and we all see things a bit differently and come from different climates around the world. We also have different God given gifts, some of you are scientific and mathematical others are artistic and creative. Both types are needed in furthering this sport.   Sunday, April 14 View Page In my last entry, I mentioned how we are often dogmatic and pragmatic in our approach to gardening. Many years ago I read a book about running a landscaping business. The book was called 'Systems for Success' by Dwight Hughes. Dwight mentioned that half the time landscapers are doing things a cettain way just because that was the way they were taught and because of that they have always done things the same way with out questioning why. He illustrates this point with a short story that went something like this. I will paraphrase it as best as I can from my memory. A newly wed couple is getting ready to celebrate their first Christmas together and for dinner the new wife is cooking up a ham. As she is preparing it to go in the oven, her husband is watching her, and notices that she cuts both ends of the ham off before putting it in the oven. He is confused by what she has just done and asks her. "Why did you just cut both ends of the ham off before putting it on the baking tray and into the oven". The wife then replies; I don't really know why.... it is how my mother always did it.... and her ham always came out great. I will call her and ask her why it has to be done that way." So she calls her mom and asks her "Why do you have to cut both ends of the ham off before it goes into the oven?" The mother then replies "Geez I don't really know why, that is just how I saw my mother do it, and her ham always came out great. WHy don't you call her and ask her." So the newlywed then calls her grandma and says, "Grandma I have a question that I need an answer too. But so far have been unsuccessful in getting one. WHy is it that you always have to cut the ends off your ham before you bake it? THe grandma then chuckled and replied "Oh that's silly, of course you don't have to cut the ends off your ham before you bake it. The only reason I used to cut the ends off the ham before I baked it is because I didn't have a pan big enough to bake it in, so I needed to cut some off so it would fit in the pan!   Thursday, April 18 View Page I thought this was interesting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7569811/   Thursday, May 2 View Page I got my giant melons in early this year. They are cooking nicely under the row cover. Row cover is the way to go you never have to vent them. It is low maintenance.   Thursday, May 9 View Page I was just reading vineman's diary and he had a question about which plant he should keep. It got me thinking that perhaps in a certain way he does get to keep both even after he culls one. Let me explain what I mean by this, WHen two plants of the same species are grown in close proximity to each other the roothaiir tips that grow and touch each other between the two plants can and often do graft together. I would bet that this phenomenon could be helpful to us as growers who are trying to get a big root system to grow a big plant and pumpkin. Here is a scientific study that I found which proves that root grafting does occur in vegetables. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1343943X.2019.1679649   Wednesday, May 15 View Page This is the 1908 Connolly I also have a 1570 ciesielski and a 1904 sperry. There were a couple others I wanted to plant this year but i figured it woould be better to focus on just three plants. Hopefully less is more and I can grow these really big! They look pretty good for this early in the year, but are growing quite slowly in this cool weather. No heating and no venting is nice. Plus I won’t have to gasp when I get my electric bill at the end of the month. They will get the size I need them to be in plenty of time for my mid to late June pollination date goal.   Wednesday, May 15 View Page 167 Holloway on tetsukabuto rootstock. The watermelons are doing better than the pumpkins….. by far.   Thursday, May 23 View Page 159.6 ciesielski JBD watermelon on 'Rampart' rootstock. I am pleased with how the melons are growing, they are ahead of schedule for some reason this year. I hope to get a mid June pollination, which I have never done before. I will have to try my hand at manually pollinating these. Normally the bees do it for me. The problem is that they miss all the early females. In late July and August the bees do a great job! There are so many culls, it is like picking cucumbers!!   Thursday, May 23 View Page 1570 ciesielski AG. I took there covers off, yesterday and voila!! Hordes of Cucumber beatles were on them today. Probably hundreds! I am glad I chose to walk down to the patch and see how things were going! It just proves that you have to have a constant eye on things or they will go south quickly. I think I am done with the row covers for the year. I have a bad habit of not checking on the plants when they are covered. I will sacrifice some early growth and vigor, but I will be able to easily monitor them and see what is going on with out the covers in the way. I like to look at them in the AM with a cup of coffee in my hand!   Friday, June 7 View Page Melons are ahead of schedule this year. let me try this again and see if I can get the picture right side up.   Friday, June 7 View Page Much better. I love the edit feature. Now if I could just completely erase some of my dumbest posts. LOL. Each melon has roughly 288 square feet to fill in, It is a bit smaller than my usual 360 square feet, but if a plant collapses it can be removed so it's neighbor can fill that space. I will miss my normal layout with long skinny plants. It was easy to get access to the culls from each side. This year will be different. I will be going barefoot through my patch looking for culls. This will be a big jungle and completely closed in byn this months end. Hopefully I have some big melons by then that are taking up most of the plants energy. In the foreground you see my 159.6 Ciesielski JBD on a rampart rootstock, then going up the photo from there we have; 160 Houston Carolina cross on a 'Tetsukabuto' squash 232 Williams JBD on a 'Tetsukabuto squash 175 Ciesielski CCx JBD F2 Hybrid on a 'Tetsukabuto' squash 167 Holloway JBD on a ' Tetsukabuto' squash   Monday, June 10 View Page Pumpkin patch. I am happy with their size for this time of year. Three plants in total. About 600 square feet per plant. A 1904 sperry a 1908 Connolly and a 1570 ciesielski.   Monday, June 17 View Page A trial row of tomatoes this year. They are all new and unusual varieties from Baker Creek seeds. We are curious to see which of these varieties are worth incorporating into our annual tomato line up. 'Green Giant' is supposed to be one of the best tasting in Baker Creeks catalog! I have 6 plants of each of the following varieties, I will let you know which ones are worth eating and which aren't. I am not expecting much from the black ones as far as taste goes. Also I am a bit nervous about the green ones, that I won't know when they are ripe. 'Ananias Noir' 'Green Giant' 'Black Beauty' 'Queen of the Night'   Monday, June 17 View Page I planted a couple long gourd seeds at the base of this dead tree I don’t remember which seed it was. Hopefully I can get a few.   Monday, June 17 View Page 71.6 english giant canteloupe. I direct seeded on Memorial Day. I will have to thin down to one. I may transplant the other two.   Monday, June 17 View Page 80 house field pumpkin. Growing on a pile of fresh cow manure shavings and hay.   Monday, June 17 View Page Not everything looks good. This is my 268 bushel gourd I am sure it will turn around.   Monday, June 17 View Page 104.5 ruthruff giant butternut First year trying these. Direct seeded Memorial Day   Monday, June 17 View Page 72 house field pumpkin   Wednesday, June 19 View Page Melon patch. I am humbled by this terrific start. Waiting for the shhhhhh to hit the fan.   Wednesday, June 19 View Page 159.6 ciesielski jbd. On rampart. This plant is loaded with sets. Not sure why. Perhaps because it is the only plant not on inter-specific squash rootstock. The squash are too vigorous if that is possible. lol.   Wednesday, June 19 View Page A bigger set on my 159.6. Maybe I should have set that one up with the rack and shade tent Don’t ask me which one is older I don’t know!!!!!! Details are not my strength.   Wednesday, June 19 View Page A nice long set on my 232 Williams. Another dark beauty. I am addicted to them   Saturday, June 22 View Page How many times in a year do you ask yourself the following questions about growing giant pumpkins 1. Why am I still doing this? 2. Or do you Console yourself with thoughts of taking a year off next year? or maybe the thought of this being your last year. I think many of us would be lying if we didn't answer yes. But then winter comes and we rest... get recuperated.... and we gear up for another year and more battles. I just came out of the patch dripping wet with sweat, shirt fully saturated, asking myself the first question WHy ??? I could wait until later tonight... but I wont be here.... plus it is supposed to thunder and rain. So It gets done now. I had a UPS subcontracter delivery guy try and take a short cut through my property. He went off the Wood Chip road and ran over about half a dozen "rocket booster" vines. (The tertiaries that I run back on the first secondary vines on each side) Also I have been battling with Mites. (usually they only show up on my melons) A few entries back I said "I am waiting for the shhh to hit the fan". I have been growing giants for a while now and from prior experience I know that typically the shhh hits the fan in the end of June or beginning of July often coinciding with a heat wave. So be warned keep those squash bugs off NOW if you don't want YVD later!!! A friend of mine who had been in the millitary told me his sergeant used to say to him "Mind your P's." Which means... Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.   Saturday, June 22 View Page "Rocket booster” tertiary vines crushed by the UPS contractor delivery driver. No big deal. It could have been worse for sure.   Saturday, June 22 View Page “ rocket boosters”, tertiaries. crushed by UPS contractor delivery driver   Tuesday, June 25 View Page Melons are all filled in.   Tuesday, June 25 View Page 159.6 ciesielski melon. I have another melon on the same plant that is just as big. I may keep both   Saturday, June 29 View Page I saw this on Facebook and thought it was funny. I could go a step farther and say if you are OK with doing Giant pumpkin growing you’re already farming. And thus a part of the madness, that is farming. Most modern people don't understand what it is like to be a farmer. Well it is quite similar to being a giant pumpkin grower. Let me explain... When your friends ask you "How much did you win?, or how much did you sell that pumpkin for?" Then you tell them how much… lets say you won $1000. That friend will always be shocked and in their mind, it is like you won the lottery or a card game. That couldn't be farther from the truth, even the best growers consider it a successful season when they can break even with their input costs. Lets not even factor in labor, because if we did, That would even put Travis Gienger's world record breaker last year into the negative..... Perhaps at least it would make it pretty darn close to neutralizing any profitability. The same is true for farmer’s. A farmer might come home from the farmers market with thousands of dollars in his or her pocket. But the true cost, the sustainable cost may still not be met! Let’s face it, We aren't doing this for any monetary gains, it is nice when the winnings come, but think about all the blown pumpkins and ripped out plants that come between the successes. Even Travis has them too. (although I would argue that perhaps he has the fewest of any elite grower) Look at the Paton's last few years they have had some elite pumpkins fall just short of the finish line. Even though I am not half the grower of the Paton's or Travis. As a grower I still know that disappointment and loss as we all do...but for me it is at a much smaller level. So why do we do this at all? Because we love it, some might say it is in our Blood, or dna. I think it is a blessing and a priveledge to be able to grow giant Pumpkins and a garden in general. Most modern people have never left the city and have never been exposed to growing a tomato, or planting a tree or tending a garden. I think this is sad. I believe we were meant to live a life with simple pleasures that tie us to the land and all of God’s creation. After all What was the job that God gave Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden before the fall? “It was to tend the garden”.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Massive thunderstorms here tons of rain in a short amount of time this is what the wheelbarrow look like in about an hour of rain no power right now weirdly we still have Wi-Fi. I have my predator generator that’s powering the house or part of it at least   Sunday, June 30 View Page A picture of some of the washout from the garden   Sunday, June 30 View Page The dill got washed out. Hopefully I can uncover some of it, and the rest of it will pop up. This kind of stuff happens every year. You can never escape, things have been going well so far, we were due   Sunday, June 30 View Page Luckily, these eggplant and peppers were tall enough to take the deluge and all the silt and sand that got washed on top of them   Sunday, June 30 View Page This photo is at the top of the garden. This is where the erosion began. I have to figure out a way to go no till on the spot because it’s on a slight slope   Sunday, June 30 View Page This is one of the spots where all that silt and sand wound up. It’s easy to see how bottomland soils get made.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Luckily, not too much silt got washed into Atlantic giant pumpkins. I don’t like to see their vines covered with anything. I’ll take the bottom root, but I don’t even cover the top. My thoughts are that there will be fewer roots but the roots they have can grow bigger and extend, and eventually equal the amount you’d have if you got the top one to root.   Sunday, June 30 View Page This is my 159.6 melon luckily they seem to have escaped any washou, stillt looking good   Sunday, June 30 View Page The farmer growing these field pumpkins obviously got a ton of overspray from his glyphosate application. I will keep an eye on these and see how they recover. I think it was some sort of test he was doing as he left half the field untreated. I have a feeling those ones will be much better in the long run as these will be stunted for a bit.   Monday, July 1 View Page I have to pick a lot of beans every year, so my trick is to pull the whole plants up. Once they’re fully ripe I pull the plants and pick the beans off in the shade, standing up from my trucks tailgate or a table. It’s much easier on my back and a lot more pleasant than being out in the sun I could pick the beans on the plants and get a couple crops, maybe two or three, but it’s easier for me to stagger the bean planting every two weeks, green beans go in every time my sweet corn goes in. I feed the picked bean plants to the cows, so nothing goes to waste   Monday, July 1 View Page This is captain Jack’s bug spray. It works great on potato beetles, it also works really well on European cabbage moth caterpillars. Anything that consumes leaves and takes out pieces of leaves. If it’s a piercing, sucking insect, it won’t work really well. This stuff is tops if you’re an organic grower, you have to try it. Actually I think it works as well as any thing, including the synthetics. It’s active ingredient is Spinosad, which is derived from a bacteria. Spinosad is very toxic to the insect. When the insect’s eat it, they will be dead the next day.   Saturday, July 6 View Page I have two melons on the 175 plant. This is a photo of the other melon. Both are about the same size. Maybe I’ll keep both. hopefully keeping two will allow the plant to sink its energy into these fruit rather than blowing up the stump. Oops I mean crown. My plants are not heavily pruned. They are rather wild compared to most melon growers. They are really thick and piled up like a jungle,vines on top of each other, reaching for the sky, overflowing the patch,I just don’t have the time to keep them super organized. I Try to do better on Atlantic Giants. My melon plants are poorly disciplined I suppose, unlike Nick McCaslin or Frank mud who run a tight ship.   Sunday, July 7 View Page This is the 159.6 Ciesielski black diamond. This is the first thing that has gone wrong with my melons so far. this nice young got a blossom end split. Fortunately, I did keep two melons on this plant so there’s still another one that has lots of potential. hopefully it can hold together.   Sunday, July 7 View Page In this photo, you can see that this plant has been stunted by these two actively growing melons. It is the only plant that isn’t overflowing. It’s alloted space. I really do like to get the melons to set early on a small plant. This can help limit plant size somewhat and hopefully reduce crown size and graft incompatibility problems.   Sunday, July 7 View Page This is a shot of the entire patch.   Sunday, July 7 View Page I have this long fat melon on a 232 Williams plant. I don’t think this will get a blossom end split. Perhaps the reason that I got the blossom end split is that we got 4 inches of rain on Friday night. it was a lot of rain in a very short amount of time   Sunday, July 7 View Page The pumpkins have just about filled in all their space about 700 ft.² per plant. I have three plants in this photo a 1904 Sperry, which is the runt of the patch it has been slow since day one when it took three weeks to germinate. When it finally did germinate, I had to put it on life support as one of the Cotyledon leaves was half rotten but I babied it because I really liked this seed and love to grow orange. it won’t disappoint by the looks of it! I think it’s going to be a good pumpkin, even though the vines are small like cucumber vines it is growing a big pumpkin very quickly. The 1908. Connolly is the middle plant it has a nice looking pumpkin around 100 pounds. The plant in the foreground is the 1570 Ciesielski it also has a nice pumpkin that looks like it will be orange around 100 pounds.   Monday, July 8 View Page The split melon was a four Lober, with a massive hollow heart. If you look on what was the the top of the melon, You can see a brown section in the rind.. that is from today, one day of being in the sun without cover, it shows how important it is to cover your melons.   Monday, July 8 View Page My 268 Ciesielski Bushel Gourd is starting to make a comeback. Hopefully I can beat my personal best of 268.   Monday, July 8 View Page This is a row of eating watermelons, they are growing out over plastic mulch. Unfortunately, the middle of the row is full of grass. I don’t think this will hurt the production at all. Some of the varieties in this row include 'jubilee', 'crimson sweet', 'sangria', 'Iopride', 'willhite tendergold' and 'Royal Golden'. There are also a few big and tasty seedless watermelons from Burpee in this row. the big and tasty look like a round compact Charleston Gray   Monday, July 8 View Page A row of cantaloupes, they are also known as muskmelons. A muskmelon is an eastern version of a western cantaloupe. (the type what you would find in the supermarket) Often a muskmelon would have ribbing and a very strong perfume or musk scent. When I was younger we would sell "Muskmelons" on my aunt and uncle's vegetable stand and that’s what we called them. I don’t know if people today still use that term. I think it’s a word that’s about to become extinct. The varieties that I am growing this year include 'Goddess', 'Cleopatra', 'Sarah’s choice' 'Crenshaw' And a weird one Called 'Kajari'   Saturday, July 13 View Page I saw some large wilting vines on many of my melon plants starting around yesterday or the day before. Immediately I assumed the worst-case scenario had happened, I assumed that the crowns had started to fail. Fortunately, it was just mice gnawing the vines in half, I never thought I would say fortunately it is just mice eating the vines, so far it appears that none have severed one of the the vines that a melon is on, so perhaps they are just helping me out with their selective pruning. LOL Anyways, I set some mice traps out and then put some mothballs around the patch in a desperate attempt to reduce their population and keep them out.   Saturday, July 13 View Page Another shot of a wilted vine.   Saturday, July 13 View Page 167 Holloway melon photo from the side. slowly, but surely it is starting to fill out its stem end. I am optimistic that it will be a symmetric melon by the end of the season   Saturday, July 13 View Page 167 Holloway Mellon from the rear   Saturday, July 13 View Page 175 Ciesielski melon it is a jumbo black diamond crossed with A Carolina Cross it is an F2 hybrid seed from back in the year 2018   Saturday, July 13 View Page This is probably the biggest melon in the patch as of right now. It is a big fat wide melon. This is on my 159.6 Ciesielski jumbo black diamond seed hopefully it’s not full of air like it’s twin that aborted.   Saturday, July 13 View Page This little future beauty is on a 1904 Sperry plant that has always been somewhat of a dwarf plant with smaller leaves and vines and slower growth, but the pumpkin certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be a dwarf! The 1904 seed took three weeks to germinate I had given up on it. But lo and behold, I kind of scratched the top soil away from the seed and noticed a little tiny radical emerging from this seed. I pulled the seed out replanted it in a fresh potting soil with the cotyledon’s just above the surface, pointed tip down. it slowly emerged even though it had mostly rotten cortyledon leaves. I highly valued this plant because I knew it had potential.   Tuesday, July 16 View Page This is the 1908 Connolly this plant has world record genetics. The weather has been hot and humid for a couple weeks now and it looks like it’s supposed to continue as far as I can see. When things get so hot and so humid everything ramps up, especially diseases! Disease is there lurking,crouching waiting to pounce and take you down. Weeds are growing ridiculously fast, bugs are hatching fast, everything is sped up. Basically you just have to buckle down and hope to hang on. Handle each crisis as it comes and hopefully you have something to show for it at the end of the year. I feel for the growers down south who deal with this for months on end. . It’s not really the heat, it’s the humidity that I feel really gets you. You can put shade netting up for heat, you can put misters up for heat. What are you gonna do to take the humidity out of the air? There’s nothing.   Wednesday, July 17 View Page I found this mouse eaten vine today. Looks like it was done a while back. This really makes me mad. This severed vine is 3 feet in front of my melon which is the 232 Williams my favorite melon in the patch. This will really slow things down. Very frustrating, but it’s par for the course. Hopefully, I can get this problem under control soon and not lose anymore.   Saturday, July 20 View Page This is the old heirloom Watermelon variety called Royal Golden. The plants have these sickly yellow leaves in the understory. When I first saw them, I was wondering what the heck is wrong with my plants? Then I realized it was just the variety. This variety is even weirder then the moon and stars. I am a little worried my 1908 Connolly might have yellow vine disease, one secondary is showing a light yellow color. It was the secondary right before the pumpkin. Hopefully it’s nothing. I will know soon enough.   Saturday, July 20 View Page Mouse damage on the 232 Williams   Wednesday, July 24 View Page 160 Houston “got a big old butt”   Wednesday, July 24 View Page 71.6 english giant cantaloupe. Still waiting to set one.   Wednesday, July 24 View Page A long gourd growing up a dead tree.   Wednesday, July 24 View Page A long gourd growing up a dead tree.   Thursday, July 25 View Page Confirmed the 1908 Connolly has yellow vine disease. It hasn’t grown any since this picture two weeks ago and now it’s starting to rot. I’ll have to figure out how to get it out of the garden because it’s gonna stink up the patch in short order. Remember several weeks ago when I said waiting for The shhhhhh to hit the fan well it’s definitely hit! with the mice eating the vines in the melons and yellow vines disease on my pumpkins. I hope to keep my remaining two pumpkins, healthy.   Wednesday, July 31 View Page Some years are Are more frustrating than others. the problem I am seeing in my corn is major damage from raccoons. i’ve lost dozens and dozens of ear so far. the mice have caused major damage to my tomatoes. Some have even girdled plants! I’m also super frustrated and disgusted about my giant watermelons. I feel like this definitely could’ve been a fantastic unbelievable year for me. all of the crowns are still beautiful and in great shape but the vines are chewed to pieces it’s so frustrating! in my cantaloupes. Mice are eating them too! for every melon I harvest, there’s one I have to throw into the woods. Some years are worse than others. It’s hard to motivate yourself to go out into the steam bath, and forge ahead when it seems, everything is collapsing around you. That’s farming for you. Rant over. By the way the sweet corn pictured is the variety’ incredible’ it’s delicious and so tender!   Tuesday, August 6 View Page This corn was planted one month ago. Sweetcorn is just about the only thing that really thrives in this wet, humid, Sticky weather. It’s got to be 3 to 4 feet tall already no tassels in sight.   Tuesday, August 6 View Page My 159.6 a big fatty.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page Last nights sunset, from The Woodbury fire tower. A real beauty   Wednesday, August 14 View Page This is a photo of the 1908 Connolly. It was hit with yellow vine disease about three weeks to a month ago. I have left the plant in place. On each side of the plant are healthy pumpkin plants. In my experience, it makes no difference to remove the sick plant.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page Another photo of the 1908 Connolly. The way the disease progresses is that it goes in sections. On the front end of the plant by the stump, the pumpkins are still setting and growing. It usually is only a matter of time before the disease catches up to it and you will see those abort and rot just like the big one in the previous photo.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page In this photo, you can see a healthy young set pumpkin growing off of a side vine typically it is only a matter of time before this one goes down too. That being said this disease is somewhat mysterious, and there have been a couple times. I was sure I had yellow Vine disease. I lost the big pumpkin on the main. The plant was exhibiting stunted leaves and yellowing leaves. Yet somehow I still was able to produce a few pumpkins that were in the 2 to 300 maybe even 400 pounds range on those sick stunted plants. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that I would load the plant up with phosphite , perhaps the phosphite has a way of preventing complete spread of the yellow vine disease? Another explanation could be the fact that perhaps they never had the disease, they had something else. Or another explanation could be. There are different strains of yellow vine disease with varying degrees of potency and different abilities to spread within the plant with different symptoms.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page In this photo, you can see the 1904 Sperry plant in the background with the sick 1908 Connolly plant in the foreground. Much is unknown about this disease and I don’t think it is a big problem with commercial growers of pumpkins even when they grow cucurbita maximas. I grow many different varieties of winter squash and have seldom had any consequential damage that amounted to anything from yellow Vine disease. I’m not sure why, but it’s never been a major factor. Unfortunately, this is a disease that is primarily a nuisance to us… Giant pumpkin growers . Let me know if you grow maxima winter squash on a large scale and have had significant damage from yellow vines disease on those crops I would be interested to hear.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page This is my 1570. Right next to the 1904 Connolly. It takes some balls to leave a sick plant right next to too healthy ones on each side of the sick one. But right now I do not have the time to clean up the 1904 Connolly, sometimes I wonder if it would be a bad idea to remove the sick plant as hopefully any insects that attack that plant will stay there and not try to migrate onto another plant, Which I assume they would if I ripped up the plant? One last thing I have talked to other growers and there does seem to be a correlation as to when the disease strikes. If you can get through the end of June and all of July, and even the beginning of August, you are most likely in my experience and other growers experiences going to be OK. So perhaps the disease does not affect the plant in the same way if it contracts it late in the season or the disease is unable to be spread for some reason late in the year. You can’t tell me there aren’t squash bugs in August and September as a matter of fact that’s when I see hordes of babies everywhere perhaps more late in the season than you’d see early in the season.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page This is a photo of my bushelgourd that nearly died early in the season. It is now taking over my entire yard yet. I see very few bushel gourds on this plant. I have only found one so far far as a matter of fact. It is about the size of a volleyball so definitely a late start here.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page I wanted to show you guys this picture too. It is the 1904 Sperry plant. I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but this plant has very small leaves. Short leaf stalks and is somewhat dwarf. It has been an interesting plant from the start, it had taken over two weeks to germinate and when it did, it was sort of slow and stunted. I didn’t care because I really wanted to grow the seed. I wonder if any of these traits would carry on onto the seeds that this pumpkin produces. Perhaps it would be a good one to try and grow for a 150 square-foot contest , because let me tell you the plant may be small. The leaves may be small, but the pumpkin really wants to grow a decent size pumpkin it’s over 1000 pounds and still growing.   Thursday, August 15 View Page I saw these footprints one of my gardens that has my watermelons and cantaloupes right away. I knew it was A dog. This garden has an electric fence wire about 30 inches off the ground for deer,they must be going underneath it.   Thursday, August 15 View Page A few minutes later, I found this melon and a few others like it. Brother Dave Cantrell used to talk about coyotes eating his melons. It has never been a problem for me, until now. It’s kind of funny because I was just talking to a lady who was telling me about a farmer who lost an entire crop to coyotes this year. I told her it’s never happened to me. I guess I brought it on myself. I ran another wire about 16 inches or maybe 12 inches off the ground. Hopefully it will hit the coyotes in the breast as they come into the garden. I also hung a few pieces of bait on the fence to give them a good zap when they go to taste it . Hopefully it scares them and they don’t come back.   Thursday, August 15 View Page Another one that was damaged by the coyotes.   Thursday, August 15 View Page The orange melons are called Kajari melons. It will be interesting to see how they taste. I grew these last year, but they are so disease prone, they are an heirloom from Baker Creek.   Thursday, August 15 View Page It looks like a field pumpkin that’s starting to ripen. Nope… It’s a royal golden watermelon. They turn bright yellow when they’re ready.   Thursday, August 15 View Page There’s a few more royal golden watermelon. It’s a tough one for me to grow because I can’t stand to look at the yellow leaves on the plants. The leaves are very, very yellow and Chlorotic looking…..a very strange melon for sure.   Saturday, August 17 View Page 167 Holloway melon. I let this one set as an after thought. You can tell by the haphazard cover I made for it. I just tucked a piece of row cover under a bunch of vines which were already covering the melon. This is a big melon and it has square shoulders, it May be my biggest jumbo black diamond this year. The stem is brown so I think it’s basically done growing. It is what it is! There is always next year, to improve! Or at least so we think. Each day is a blessing.   Saturday, August 17 View Page 167 Holloway melon. I let this one set as an afterthought as you can tell by the haphazard cover I made for it. I basically just talked to piece of roll cover under a bunch of vines which were already covering it. This is a big melon and it has square shoulders, it May be my biggest jumbo black diamond this year. The stem is brown so I think it’s basically done growing. It is what it is always next year! Or at least so we think. Each day is a blessing.   Saturday, August 17 View Page The thought that there is always next year is not always true. This is a 160 Houston melon. I let two fruit set on this plant. It’s the first year I’ve grown Carolina cross in quite some time. Hank was ready for a new season. he started out and had everything going good, unfortunately he never got to finish the season. It looks like his wife is growing out his melons and finishing his year for him. I think that’s great! I hope She grows a personal best for Hank and for her. That would be something else. A garden is a very good place that can help to keep your mind Off things.   Saturday, August 17 View Page In this photo, you can see my long gourd has made it to the top of this redbud tree or should I say dead bud tree. (A good dad joke) anyways it’s about 20 feet up. I don’t see any gourds on it. Maybe there are some growing on the ground, in which case they are no longer, long gourds, now they are snake gourds!   Saturday, August 17 View Page In this photo, you can see my paulownia trees. I cut these to the ground last winter and they have pushed out these new huge leaves and tremendous growth. They are over 20 feet now.   Monday, August 19 View Page Yesterday we were hit with tremendous amounts of rain in my area of CT. The roads were pretty sketchy and many of them were impassable. My son was stranded at work all day, because the road on both sides of his workplace were under a torrent of water! Fortunately he is home safe now. The crazy thing is that we didn't even know that this rain was going to happen like this. SO because of that, there was zero warning and the whole event went unpredicted by the meteorologists. I was dumb enough to have been caught out on the roads during the worst of the event and it was not smart. I had to push my luck too many times and drive through areas that were covered by standing and also fast moving water. I was lucky enough to find a safe way home. After I arrived home my wife was showing me videos on facebook of the damage. Some of the roads were completely washed out and undercut with deep ravines left. I learned that Just because a road is paved doesn't mean it can't get washed away. The rainclouds just stagnated over us and kept unleashing the precipitation in unprecedented amounts. YouTube   Monday, August 19 View Page https://www.facebook.com/reel/1017075513464219 This was the craziest one that I saw on facebook, I saw water coming off of someones long driveway that was similar to this but on a much smaller scale! Still was quite humbling to see the power of nature and it's brutal force.   Wednesday, August 21 View Page This picture shows a box of mir-acid and miracle grow. the blue box is the mir- acid. I am having a hard time seeing what actually would make this product acid, or at least any more acid than their regular miracle grow. Perhaps they just call it acid because it provides extra iron which is typically the nutrient that’s deficient in higher pH soils. Plants that require acid soils are plants that are called iron inefficient plants. Some iron inefficient plants would include blueberries, camellias, azaleas, petunias etc. If I used miracle grow on my giants I would probably use the mir-acid over the regular miracle grow for my Atlantic giants and watermelons Why?. Because all the micronutrients in the mir-acid are in a chelated (plant available) form. Not so with the straight miracle grow. Where am I wrong?   Thursday, August 22 View Page I picked the rest of the eating melons the varieties harvested were iopride, royal golden, sugar, baby, Willhite Tendergold, Starbright, jubilee, sangria and a few crimson sweets.   Thursday, August 22 View Page I picked the rest of the eating melons the varieties harvested were iopride, royal golden, sugar, baby, Willhite Tendergold, Starbright, jubilee, sangria and a few crimson sweets.   Thursday, August 22 View Page This is all that’s left of my giant melon plants. Still there are some big melons here. unfortunately the mice really shut things down early. I did five plants Four were on the tetaukabuto squash rootstock one was on Rampart. The one on the Rampart is the only one that wasn’t destroyed by mice. Coincidence? or is there something to it?   Thursday, August 22 View Page These three melons were grown on the same plant. They’re probably 75 pounds or so. The plant has two more on it in the same size range that weren’t quite ready. Such beautiful looking fruit. It looks like they are Carolina Cross, but I am not sure.   Thursday, August 22 View Page This is the healthy plant on The rampart root stock. It is my 159.6 jumbo black diamond seed. a nice big melon it’s taping just over 200 pounds. I am hoping it goes heavy but I have a feeling it’s got a big hollow heart, so it won’t. When these jumbo black diamond fat melons are round, they tend to be lighter at the scales. if they are more cylindrical with nice square shoulders they will likely go heavy.   Thursday, August 22 View Page In this photo, the two melons on the left that are undercover are off the 160 Houston Carolina Cross. The one in the back is my biggest Carolina Cross. I haven’t measured it because I used vines to shade it. The vines are all dead now so I threw a sheet over it And I need to get this thing weighed.The one on the right is my 159.6 jumbo black diamond I like that the plant is still alive although the stem is starting to brown up in a few spots so not sure if it’s still growing.   Thursday, August 29 View Page I noticed some yellowing on my 159.6 jumbo black diamond melon. I decided that it needed to get to a weigh off because something might be going on inside. ( color change most likely is indicative of it rotting on the inside) So I decided to take it to the Goshen fair this weekend and get a weight for it.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Unfortunately, when I flipped the melon over and looked at its underside, I found a soft spot that went to The flesh. So out came the machete.   Thursday, August 29 View Page So after finding the first melon with the rotten bottom, I decided to harvest my second biggest jumbo black diamond melon. It was nearly as big as the 159.6. Unfortunately after and inspection it had a soft spot too! Strike two! I feel like this year has been a big strike out. Hopefully I can still get some decent giants on the scale and redeem this difficult year.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Here are the Twins.   Thursday, August 29 View Page They’re back sides.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Looks huge in this shot. No tricks here, both the melon and trash can are on the ground.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Measurements on the twin melons.   Thursday, August 29 View Page 159.6 melon cut open. A darn three lober. A very big hollow heart! Probably would have been on the light side, although that thick, thick rind would have helped offset it a little.   Thursday, August 29 View Page 167 Holloway. This one would have gone heavy to the charts with that thick rind and lots of flesh. It must have been pollinated with a white seeded melon, as the seeds are not black.   Thursday, August 29 View Page A shame probably would of been a legitimate 200 pounds or more!   Saturday, August 31 View Page Getting this 1904 sperry pumpkin loaded up yesterday afternoon. It is a gorgeous pumpkin!   Monday, September 2 View Page 1306 at the fair   Monday, September 2 View Page 1306 Blossom end   Monday, September 2 View Page My two melons. A 198 (grown off the 232 Williams) in the foreground and an exhibition fruit that was grown off my 175 seed from 2018. It is an f2 hybrid seed between a jbd and a cc. The weight of that melon was 182.   Monday, September 2 View Page The 198. A real beauty. Fell short of its potential due to mice eating the vine in half that the melon was on.   Monday, September 2 View Page 198   Monday, September 2 View Page 182   Monday, September 2 View Page 182 also a dark beauty!   Monday, September 2 View Page Eating a willhite, tender gold . delicious!   Tuesday, September 3 View Page I finally have a long gourd set on my long gourd planted under the dead tree. Not sure if there is still time to get this before the Durham fair or not. But it is growing fast. Summer has currently left us. We are in fall weather right now.   Sunday, September 8 View Page Getting ready to harvest my 1570 for the Bethlehem fair.   Sunday, September 8 View Page A new personal best!! 1668! I am thrilled.   Sunday, September 8 View Page Steve Mayden’s 2nd Place entry. This one went heavy, it was a real rock.   Sunday, September 8 View Page Another photo of the 1668 Ciesielski 2024. I grew this pumpkin on my 1570 seed from last year. The 1570 was an 1885 Werner X 1686 Stelts. It looks like the 1686 did add some percent heavy to the 1885 Werner. Pretty cool   Sunday, September 8 View Page After winning first at the Bethlehem fair My wife called me a sandbagger. I said “hey I never complained about my pumpkins. I was only complaining about my watermelons. So therefore I wasn’t sandbagging about my pumpkins. I just wasn’t saying much about them.” Oh yeah except for the one I lost to yvd. I did complain a bit about that one.   Sunday, September 8 View Page This fat Carolina Cross had a 186 OTT measurement. Unfortunately, it to had started to rot. So my three biggest watermelons this year, all rotted, this one was solid a four or five lober. Too bad. This one was grown on the 160 Houston plant. I grew two melons on the plant. The other one was still good and I brought it to the Bethlehem fair. It was a long one and it weighed 178 pounds. I will post some pictures in a following entry.   Sunday, September 8 View Page Cool photo my son took of a spider on the chicken coop   Sunday, September 8 View Page Another shot of the spider   Monday, September 9 View Page Growing fast at some point, I’m gonna have to support this thing   Tuesday, September 10 View Page One last photo of the 1306. A real beauty. I am going to sell this one at some point . It should keep a long time it is a healthy problem free pumpkin.   Thursday, September 12 View Page This is the Watermelon I brought to the Bethlehem fair final OTT was 185 inches. It is a 160 Houston. This watermelon weighed 178 pounds. It was grown on the same plant as the 186 OTT Melon. Too bad this plant was basically dead by August 1. I remember mentioning in an early diary post that I was waiting for The shhh.. to hit the fan. Well it did hit it with my melons. Still grateful to have some melons to bring to a weigh off or two   Thursday, September 12 View Page Another shot of the Beautiful 178 pound Watermelon.   Monday, September 16 View Page Still growing I have lots of them now, this is fun!   Monday, September 16 View Page Still growing I have lots of them now, this is fun!   Wednesday, September 18 View Page This is a ‘true sincerity’ disease resistant patented rose. It was super humid all summer and it never got black spot. All the rest of my roses that I care for did, even the ‘knock out’ roses got it pretty bad.   Thursday, September 19 View Page This is Watermelon number two on the 175 Ciesielski plant. It has an OTT of 156 inches. The plant has been dead since early August, yet the stem still had some green on it. I harvested it today and it will be on display at the blue colony diner in Newtown, Connecticut   Thursday, September 19 View Page The melon was way out on the main vine   Thursday, September 19 View Page This is a really cool picture of the vine that my 198 melon was growing on. In an earlier diary entry I showed how the mice had nibbled this vine in half. Obviously the plant threw out Lots of callous tissue and nearly healed itself! that’s amazing!   Thursday, September 19 View Page I took the seeds out of the 1668. As you can see it had nice thick walls.   Saturday, September 28 View Page A big sweet potato. Enough to feed a big family!   Saturday, September 28 View Page Does anyone know what this Apple is? I think it’s on the earlier side as I tasted it and it seemed slightly overripe. In my next entry, you’ll see the pink flesh. My daughter works at a horse barn, and someone brought these in to feed the horses. They have the tree in their backyard.   Saturday, September 28 View Page Here’s a picture of the flesh. If this tree hasn’t been sprayed, that’s a pretty amazing apple. It may carry good disease tolerance. If it’s a seedling, it’s probably worth propagating   Saturday, September 28 View Page Here’s a picture of the flesh. If this tree hasn’t been sprayed, that’s a pretty amazing apple. It may carry good disease tolerance. If it’s a seedling, it’s probably worth propagating   Saturday, September 28 View Page Last photo of it.   Saturday, September 28 View Page Last photo of it.   Friday, October 4 View Page A row of pretty, purple dahlias.   Friday, October 4 View Page Some are in the 7-8” range.   Friday, October 25 View Page I had some potatoes that were in cold storage for over a year. I had forgotten about them. I re-discovered them today. They had all rotted and they grew these new little ones. This all happened Without any sunlight or any care whatsoever. These potatoes could be eaten or They could be planted   Friday, October 25 View Page Giant c. moschata squash. Maybe 50 pounds. Are these good to eat?   Friday, October 25 View Page Long gourds are still going. The frost didnt hit them to bad. I let the chickens out in the pen. They still haven’t pecked the crown to pieces. I guess they don’t even care for the lagenaria species   Saturday, November 2 View Page First year with any figs to harvest. These are the variety Italian 258. They are sweet and good. They are only about the size of a golf ball. I will have to dig the tree and move it into the cold cellar to get it away from freezing temperatures this winter.   Saturday, November 2 View Page First year with any figs to harvest. These are the variety Italian 258. They are sweet and good. They are only about the size of a golf ball. I will have to dig the tree and move it into the cold cellar to get it away from freezing temperatures this winter.   Saturday, November 2 View Page Better than the crappy figs you get in the supermarket   Saturday, November 2 View Page The last melon to get the seeds out of. It’s the 161 Ciesielski growing off the 167 Holloway this plant had two fruit on it. This was the smaller of the two the other one was 200+ but the bottom rotted out on it.   Saturday, November 2 View Page A five Lober with tan seeds. Interesting the other melon on the plant also had tan seeds.   Wednesday, November 6 View Page We haven’t had any substantial rain here since August when we had the flood. It’s been crazy. I have never seen anything like this. This is my daughter’s horse field. Normally, this time of year the horses would have it cut short, but it would be green. This is ridiculous, hopefully we get rain soon. I transplanted some rhododendrons the other day and it was like digging in powder. I have lived in this area for most of my life and have never seen It this dry, for this long. Our typical weather here provides 4 to 5 inches every month of the year. The crazy thing about it, is that we had so much rain over the summer. We are just now beginning to fall below the yearly average for rainfall. Let me know how you are doing for rainfall in your region. I’m interested to hear.   Wednesday, November 6 View Page Time to pullout the sprinkler for the cover crops   Sunday, November 10 View Page https://www.walshmedicalmedia.com/open-access/seedless-pumpkin-vegetable-production-using-gibberellic-acid-ga3-as-plant-hormone-and-genetically-modified-technique.pdf An interesting article about giberellins, Giberellins are quite commonly used in the early blooming stages to enhance seedless fruit production, Clementines and many varieties of citrus have little viable pollen and may also have poorly functioning ovules. (these are actually the desired traits that create a seedless orange) Many of these seedless varieties would have very poor ability to set a crop and it would not would not be economically feasible to grow them with out the aid of Giberellins. Pumpkins are far different than these citrus varieties and have very viable pollen and good ovules that produce lots of seed with proper cross pollination. But they can still be made seedless (according to the attached study) with the use of giberellins. Maybe this could be another way to produce a seedless watermelon? Right now all the seedless watermelons are from seeds that produce tetraploid melons. (tetraploids are sterile). I have been interested in giberellins lately but didn't intend to uncover this. I had just seen a video on Youtube about how they have to put nets over mandarins to keep the bees out to grow seedless mandarins. I didn't understand how that would work. Because a perfect flower(like a citrus) will still produce seeded fruit when properly pollinated. (Think of a greenhouse tomato, they still produce plenty of seeds when you just flick the bloom to pollinate it.) This youtube video brought me into some research and I discovered that seedless citrus fruit varieties are quite different, even though they have perfect flowers, those flowers may not be able to pollinate themselves, yet often the tree can still be fooled into growing a fruit without any seeds. Some varieties are better at setting seedless fruit while others are very poor producers. The poor producers are the ones that need their fruit set to be enhanced by giberellic acid. I know there is much false information out there on youtube, and I might not always catch it or know the difference with politics or some other topic that someone is trying to mislead me in, but in agriculture, I have a pretty good bullsh...... detector. In the above case it wasn't BS, it's true that bee transferred pollen will increase the seed count in certain mandarin varieties which would lead to seedy fruit if nets were not used. The following is an example of what I am talking about. A few years ago several CSA customers of mine were asking for female eggplants. They then took the time to show me which ones were female based on the shape of the fruit. This idea all started from some internet video about how to choose the best eggplant by sexing the finished fruit!   Tuesday, November 12 View Page I saw this cool quote today by J. Robert Openheimer “There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry… There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.”