I grew watermelons this year in a raised bed in home made compost. I grew Crimsons this year and they were the size of Basketballs. Every few weeks I added 13-13-13 or Miracle grow. Watermelons like a lot of nitrogen. My homemade compost is manure free, as I dont raise cows and dont know what they are fed. My compost is 70% browns and 30% greens. I grew 3 this year and they did great. I still have watermelons coming in As an experiment I grew cucumbers in the same bed, in a tomato cage. I had a bumper crop of cucumbers. I also did my cantaloupes the same way as the watermelons, except it was 50% compost and 50% soil and had a great yield as well

Jackallenss, The author of the link is complaining about labelled bags of grass seed that don't specify what's in it. The purchaser has to read the contents carefully to know what they're getting. If the bag is labelled tall fescue, it will contain tall fescue. All the more reason to avoid something called 'contractors mix'. It's not clear what it contains. I think what you and Ibanez don't understand is pennington, scotts, etc... don't actualy produce grass seed. They buy it from seed farms and package it. They sell many different cultivar mixes, so you can't say their seed is good or bad, you can merely state that a particular cultivar that their bags contain may be good or bad. What they have in their bags tends to vary from year to year based on availibility and price. When I buy seed, I always read the label. While I haven't memorized the stats for every fescue seed, there are a few common ones that do well for me and I tend to buy them. For example, scotts uses wolfpack and tar heel. Both have done well for me in the past, so I'll look for them. I've had bad luck with rebels, so I avoid it.

I don't know what it is,sorry,but it looks like it could be a tree or shrub seedling (something woody) so it would be better to remove it now before it's root system really gets imbedded in the ground. I have the same plant popping up in my yard sometimes and I always get rid of it a.s.a.p.

Farmgardener, I'm sorry you're having such a rough time with the garden this summer. It's this darned weather. Some years we just get to a point where you cannot water enough to keep the garden producing, and it sounds like your area is at that point now. (Mine is getting closer and closer to that point by the day.) There's no shame in walking away from the garden and waiting for better weather---either in the fall or next year. Jennifer, The chickens are fine. They are bored and they are aggravated with being held hostage in a nice climate-controlled area (and I don't care that they are aggravated because I want them safe from the extreme heat). I'm thinking we'll let them out tomorrow because our forecast high for tomorrow is only 106. There's only six chickens left, courtesy of the heavy predator population we've had the last two or three years. The predators get 1 or 2 chickens a week except when I lock them up in their coop/run and don't let them free-range. This is why I'm about to give up on having chickens. We have a much, much, much worse predator problem these last few years than we had when we moved here 20 years ago. The chickens get hot or bored or whatever and wander off into the woods, despite my efforts to stop them. They ignore me and just keep going, and if you try to pursue them, which is dangerous in snake season anyway, they just run deeper into the woods, which is more dangerous for them. Then, something gets them in the woods and we never see them again. If I didn't have these 6 locked up in the mudroom, we probably would have lost at least another one this week. I call these six the smart ones because now they stick close to the house when they're out, but I don't know if they're being smart and cautious or if it just has been too hot to roam around and get very far from the house. When these are gone, I doubt we'll get more. Losing them is hard to bear. If we ever do have chickens again, they won't be allowed to free-range. If chickens are never allowed to free-range and are always confined to a fenced chicken run, they're fine with that because they don't know what it is like to be free ranging. Once they've free-ranged, though, they hate being looked up permanently and it is stressful to them to be confined. So, I try to keep these as safe as possible while still allowing them to free-range, but I'm resigned to the fact that the bobcats or coyotes will get them eventually. We went many years with only losing a couple of year, but for the last couple of years it has been 1 or 2 a week. Jacob, You've had a very adventurous couple of days. I'm glad the garden held up to the hail, and glad the baseball-sized hail didn't fall at your place. My childhood home got hit by baseball-sized hail when I was about 20 or 21 years old, and by the time all the damage was repaired, my parents practically had a new house (and new cars). I'm envious of your cool weather. When we moved here, we thought we'd be able to sleep with the windows open in nice weather. Well, that didn't work out so well as the frogs made such a racket during mating season that you couldn't sleep at all. So, the windows stay closed now. Jen, That Boston terrier sounds very, um, energetic. I hope y'all survive the weekend. Nancy, I like gravel that has been taken over by grass (and/or weeds) just like Mike McGrath described. He's one of my favorite garden writers, and Organic Gardening magazine never was worth reading after he left his job as its' editor. You can have the appearance of a grassy lawn, but the ability to park on it no matter the weather. I'd like to gravel over our entire side yard that sits between the house and garage one of these days and then let the grass grow up through the gravel. The dense, compacted clay in this area holds puddles of water forever after it rains, turning into a lake when it rains a lot, so gravel on top of the clay would be a huge improvement. Kim, I agree with you. For the 3rd or 4th day in a row, we were over 100 degrees by noon. It might have been the same at your place out there west of us. This is ridiculous heat! I'm ready for a break, even though our break here still will include highs in the upper 90s. I bet 97 will feel fairly cool after so many days between 106-111. Tomorrow should be our last triple-digit temperature day for at least a week, if the forecasters are correct. I looked at the garden about an hour ago when I went out there to check on the plants in containers. Considering the excessive heat we've been having, it looks fairly decent. Not great. Not good. Not nearly as good as usual, but mostly still alive and likely to recover if the temperatures will drop down to normal or average July temperatures. Of course, August awaits, and our hottest weather usually occurs in the first half of August so it isn't like I think the garden's hard times are over. They aren't. Maybe, though, we'll at least get a few slightly cooler days. No chance of rain though. If the drought continues to deepen and worsen, though, all bets are off. Dawn