Suggestion for growing melons on clay soils: We didn't have room for melons in our garden until the guy who rents the farm ground around us started leaving a small field fallow. The ground was a pretty well spent corn field with heavy clay soil. But⦠I found that I could grow good melons on the ground by giving just the soil for the "hill" some special preparation. I dig out a hole a bit over a foot in diameter and a foot deep, dumping the soil in a garden cart. Then I use my shovel or garden fork to work fertilizer, lime, and peat moss as deeply as possible into the bottom of the hole. I also mix a bit of fertilizer, lime, and a good bit of peat moss (about as much peat as the soil I dug) into the soil in the cart. I water the hole thoroughly, return the soil mix from the cart to the hole and transplantâ¦adding a bit more water with a bit of dilute starter fertilizer mixed in. I mulch our melons with grass clippings, mostly from the part of the field we don't garden (and keep mowed as part of the deal with the farm renter). We live in an area where much of the land south and west of us is clay soil where farmers grow lots of great, commercial melons. They're amazed we can grow good melons on our land. But doing each hole as I do is lots of extra workâ¦and the peat moss is expensive. But it just has paid off handsomely for us. Here is a link that might be useful: Senior Gardening - Transplanting Melons

I received this interesting article form the local extension office. I'm in Zone 6 West Virginia. It just FYI The established controls for the squash vine borer are somewhat deficient. The gardener who goes on the offensive for controlling this pest will: A. Inject Bt into the hollow stems near the base. B. Slit open the stem, remove the borers, then cover the infected stem with soil in order to grow additional roots. C. Cover the plant base with shaving cream or some other barrier. D. Cover the plant with a row cover; then pollinate by hand. These procedures seldom work well because the borers from previous seasons have entered your soil and pupated. In fact, following the above prescriptions will insure that you continue year after year to cultivate the squash vine borer as though they were your pets. The Bt does not work, because the borers work in the solid portion of the plant base, and some always seem to escape. The slitting operation does not work because you always miss one or two borers, and the plant is too weak to save at that point anyway. The barriers and row covers don't work because your pets are already in place, despite your crop rotation efforts. The above are mostly anecdotal remedies, similar to those for slugs and snails; a real waste of time and effort. With this pest, it is better to operate with defensive tactics. First, minimize your plantings of hollow stemmed cucurbits. Instead of pumpkins or winter squash, grow butternut squash. Limit your summer squash to a single variety or grow a solid stemmed variety such as Zucchetta rampicante (Pinetree Seeds Co.) As soon as your hollow stem summer squash starts to lay down from the weight of the plant, place aluminum foil on the ground underneath the stem at the base to disorient arriving moths. This will result in minimizing the attraction of your garden to the moth from adjacent and removed properties. Second, minimize the number of moths originating on your own property, by not allowing any larvae to reach the ground, ever. We'll discuss how to do that in the next paragraph. The result of this procedure, is that over time you will eliminate the number of moths hatching on your own property. And, in a few years you will have no moths except for the stray one that was blown to your property by the wind. Since you have minimized your hollow stem plantings, the outside incursions will be small, infrequent, and occur in random years if your immediate neighbors are not also growing hollow stemmed cucurbits. If they are, then you need to act in concert. If you live near to commercial growers of cucurbits, the problem may well be insurmountable. You would have to follow all of these suggestions in addition to protecting your plants with row covers. In addition, there may be some sections of the country where the squash vine borer moth is found in great numbers. As to procedure, here is where I suggest you start: First, plan on succession plantings. Pretend that your zucchini is lettuce or any other veggie that we are accustomed to replant several times. Harvest as much fruit as you can before the stems are invaded. Inspect every day that you harvest, and guess when it is about one week before first leaf wilt, based on the amount of frass and the number of holes in the stem, then pull the entire plant out of the ground. Cut off the lower section containing the larvae, and place in a bucket of water, or soapy water, or no water - whatever it takes to destroy existing larvae, or at least prevent them from ever reaching any soil, so that they can never pupate, or wrap in plastic wrap and send to the landfill with your trash. Put the rest of the plant in your compost pile. Plant one or two (or more, depending upon family size) zucchini seeds every 14 to 21 days, so you will always have fruit all summer. Over the years, your squash vine borer problem will slowly disappear (again, depending upon your immediate neighbors.) If you minimize the attraction, gradually destroy all those moths originating on your property, and plant successively, you will enjoy plenty of summer squash, and eliminate the need for chemicals on one more garden challenge. If you have but little space for summer squash, then your succession starts will have to be in containers. As you throw each infected plant away, another good sized one will be ready to take its place. Instead of having a continuous supply of squash, you might have to go without squash for a week or two between plants. That will not be hard to take, compared to the alternative.

My plants got a really bad case of powdery mildew before hardly any fruits even got a chance to form. I didn't spray them till after a lot of the leaves on the plants had already died. Lots of things went wrong for me this year with my vines. To begin with I started the seeds inside later that I wanted to (which isn't too big of a problem since they didn't necessarily need to be started inside). Then they were the last things to get planted. Partially because the weather was so cold and wet at the beginning of spring, and we had to till a whole new area for our vines this year since we expanded. Another thing that helped to contribute to the downfall of our vines was that we did not water them, and it was a very dry summer for us. We also put down black plastic since that area can tend to flood and we hoped it would keep the dirt from washing away (we have taken care of the flooding problems for next year so we wonÂt need the black plastic). I think the plastic contributed to the drying out of the plants. Wow that felt good to get that all out! Our vines have been such a disappointment this year. Oh well, there is always next year, and I have definitely learned what I need to do differently. Next year we will probably grow them in the same area, but this time I plan on setting up soaker hoses to help with the watering problem. That way I can just turn it on and let it water and donÂt have to get the leaves wet either. Plus I will make sure I get them started inside at the right time. We plan to get a tiller for our tractor so that should cut the time in half that it takes to get every thing tilled, which means everything should be able to get planted sooner. I would suggest that next year if you are worried about the mildew you should spray the plants as soon as you see the white spots, before the vines begin to die. I counted at least 5 fruits on your 2 vines looks to me like you did a pretty good job this year. I love butternut squash.

A definite possibility. Long of Naples is a butternut type ( C. moschata) in the 35 lb class. Not usually considered a monster squash. But it matches the photos better than anything I have seen. If it has hard solid vines as opposed to the hollow vines of C. pepo and C. maxima, that may be it or a cross. Some of the banana types will get big but the coloring is wrong. They are C. maximas so could be crossed with a bigger C. maxima. Another test, Hungarian Mammoth is touted as one of the few naked seed squash. I have no idea whether it is the same squash as Hungarian Giant, but I don't see that claim for Hungarian Giant.