>"Forget smaller varieties. You'll get better taste from larger varieties, like Black Diamond, OrangeGlo, Moon and Stars."I respectfully disagree. For one, those of us with shorter seasons don't have the time & heat of California to mature the larger watermelons; so that choice is closed to us... and that was the point of the original poster. Then there is the matter of taste. To me & everyone I've shared them with, "Yellow Doll" tastes better than any store-bought watermelon. It could just be a matter of freshness, but I don't think so. The rind is extremely thin, the flesh is crisp & juicy (not grainy like many of the large types) and the center is solid, with no cracks or hollows. The local farmer's markets are making a killing with "Yellow Doll". And while I haven't tasted all of the wonderful melons that can be grown in warmer climes, Amy Goldman has. In her book "Melons For The Passionate Grower", she sings the praises of "Blacktail Mountain". She has grown & tasted hundreds, and in her words, "Blacktail is the gold standard by which my daughter and I judge all other watermelons." In the back of the book, there are quick thumbnails of each variety, with a brief description & sources. This also gives the sugar content of each melon, measured in degrees Brix. On this scale, "Orangeglo" is 10 degrees, "Moon & Stars" is 10 degrees, "Carolina Cross" is 9 degrees - and "Blacktail Mountain is 10.5 degrees. These are all fine melons... and granted, there is more to flavor than just sweetness. But barring proof to the contrary, "Blacktail Mountain" - the earliest variety - is still one of the top contenders. F.Y.I., there were 3 watermelons with a Brix exceeding that of "Blacktail". "Tom Watson" came out on top with 12 degrees, followed by "Fairfax" and "Luscious Golden" with 11 degrees. All of these are available from either Baker Creek, or from Sand Hill Preservation.

All right, you guys, keeping the water in the clay soil is easier than it seems......I HAVE CLAY SOIL. Heavy, red, thick, mucky, yucky, impossible-to-drain-when-it-is-wet and impossible-to-wet-when-it-is-dry clay soil. The issue for us, therefore, is not how to hold the water, but how to get the water to drain. So, the pond was impossibly easy to build. Our backhoe guy, Elvis, was here in the late spring of 2000 digging a hole in which to place our 6' x 8' pre-fab tornado shelter. I asked him how much more it would cost to get him to dig me a "little" pond for my water lilies and he told me that his hourly rate was the same no matter what he was digging. So, I asked him to dig me a more-or-less-round (but not perfectly round) pond about 15' in diameter, two feet deep, and with gently sloping sides (so turtles could wade in, etc.). It took him about 10 minutes! The dirt he removed was used to fill in a gully elsewhere on the property. After he dug it, we filled it with the water hose and of course, the water was about the same color as what you see in the Red River (we are VERY close to the Red River so that is not surprising.) We put the water lilies (in pots) into the pond although they eventually outgrew their pots and rooted into the pond bottom. Over time we added other plants like saggitaria and pickerel rush. Native sedges and other water loving plants essentially appeared out of nowhere and began growing at the edge of the pond. The first few months, it really wasn't 100% "waterproof" and there was some seepage. Over time, though, as decomposing plant material deposited on the bottom of the pond, it formed a layer (and that layer has a name and I remember seeing it in Tim Matson's book, but I don't remember what it is) that basically helped seal the pond. Once that happened, the water cleared up and has been pretty and clear ever since unless we dig and disturb the pond bottom. Even then, though, the water eventually clears on its own. In a rainy year, the pond stays full all on its own. In a dry year, I add water a couple of times a month to make up for whatever is evaporating out. The fish, frogs, turtles, dragonflies, water skimmers and other critters showed up on their own. I do think DS may have "saved" some small fish from the creek and put them in the pond during a drought year when the creek was drying up. Because the pond is close to the house, the wildlife don't bother it a lot although we'll see an occasional blue heron "fishing" in the pond, or find raccoon tracks, or (worst of all) see a water moccasin hanging out in the water. Because of the lay of the land, if the pond is totally full, the excess water during a rainstorm runs downhill to the north so there isn't too much excessive puddling around the pond itself. The thick, heavy, red, mucky clay is the reason we have five ponds. All you have to do is dig and wait for rainfall and you have a pond. POND #1: The oldest pond is in clayey-sandy soil and is probably 65-80 years old--no one who lives here really remembers how old that one is. Because of root infiltration from nearby trees, it doesn't hold water all that well so it is essentially an overflow pond that holds runoff during the "rainy season" here, which is roughly from March or April through July or so, at least in a non-drought year. This pond is fairly well silted in but still about 5'-6' deep and is about a half acre. It catches runoff in general, and specifically catches excess water from Pond #2. Pond #2 is the "old stock tank" that has been used to provide water for cattle on this land since about the 1940s or 1950s up until we built the house in 1998-99 an the cattle had to go. A lot of the locals here have told us stories of swimming as kids in that pond--it was a great place to cool off after a hard day's work. It is also pretty much silted in and is about 6' to 7' deep and, when very full, is about 3/4 of an acre. We have a fishing dock there, but it has dried up repeatedly since the drought of 2005-2006 and currently is empty. It will take a lot of rain to refill it. POND #3 is the lily pond behind the house that Elvis dug for us in 2000. POND #4 is the sewage lagoon, dug by Elvis and Ed early in 1999. When the perk test showed that we'd need hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet of lateral line to drain the water from the septic system, the DEQ guy recommended we put in a lagoon instead. So, it is about 150' from the house, has what is essentially sterile water by the time it reaches the lagoon and is a wildlife haven. All the wildlife prefer it. It never dries up but it almost did during the exceptional (D-4) drought of 2005-2006. POND #5 sits at the northeast corner of my veggie garden. The veggie garden is on a slope and we had Elvis put in this small pond (about 5' deep and about 13' or 14' feet in diameter) to halt erosion. It is essentially a wildlife pond and is usually full of frogs and such. One of our dogs considers it his own personal swimming pool when it has water in it. It has been dry for over a year now because too little rain has fallen to refill it since the heavy rains stopped in July 2007. I think it probably dried up about Nov. or Dec. '07 and hasn't had any water in it since then except for temporary runoff that soaks into the pond bottom within a few hours of a heavy rain. We also have springs in at least three areas, but none of those areas are suitable for a pond or we'd have put in a spring-fed pond. One spring does feed the swamp and the other two feeds the creeks. One dries up periodically and that creek has been empty for most of the last three years (since the 2005-2006 drought) but the other two have never dried up). If y'all had my heavy red clay soil, you could have all the ponds you wanted. The larger issue is how to garden in that clay. In the veggie garden, I have build raised beds, for the most part, or at least have really, really improved the clay tremendously even where I didn't build a raised bed (the corn and pumpkin patch are not raised) and neither are the flower borders). Around the house, it has taken tons of amending the soil just to be able to plant shrubs and trees that "tolerate" clay. I don't have anything in that area that "needs" good drainage. On the east side of the house, the clay was truly impenetrable. Couldn't dig it. Couldn't rototill it. So, while Elvis was at the house putting in Pond #3 and Pond #5 and the storm cellar, he dug out the clay for the east-facing shrub bed, essentially leaving me a 12" deep bowl that held water just like a regular pond. How did we turn that into a well draining bed? It took six years of sheet composting.....putting every compostable material we could get our hands on into the bed and letting it do its' thing. We also added back a small amount of clay over time, and bagged potting soil and lots of bagged soil conditioner (a humus/pine bark fines mix). It was not terribly attractive, but every spring I planted annual flowers in there and mulched them and no one knew sheet composting was occurring there. Finally, between the sheet composting and the action of earthworms, the clay bowl stopped being a mini-pond and became a well-drained bed, but it took forever. If our clay had refused to hold water (which I never thought was going to happen), we would have used betonite. In the rare exceptionally rainy year (2004 and the first 6.5 months of 2007), we have standing water everywhere. Since a rainy year is fairly rare, we don't have that too often though. And because we're on a slope, it basically runs off. Two books I read that I really enjoyed were Tim Matson's first book on building earth-bottom ponds and the late, great, Ardmoreite (that's a resident of Ardmore for all you new Oklahomans) Louise Riotte's pond book, which is called "Catfish Ponds and Lily Pads". Dawn

I live in SW Washington state, 600 feet altitude, and not much heat. Gold Flower (from Fedco) was my best watermelon this year: good flavor and quite a few melons. Sugar Baby was OK, but didn't produce many melons. Jenny Lind muskmelon produced, but tasted lousy. Early Crenshaw didn't produce well, but I got a couple of tasty ripe melons, which really amazed me in this climate. These were all grown in the open ground, trained onto a chain link fence. Next summer I'm going to try them in a poly house. Soil: I tilled about 2 inches of coarse sand into the top 8 inches of my clay loam soil, and raked it up into raised beds. The melons liked it. I once grew some melons on pure sand, and they grew like crazy, but the melons didn't have any flavor.

Hi, After deliberating for a few days on the idea of a theme for my potager, I kept leaving the "Irish Garden" idea (it kept sounding bleak) and coming back to the Monet painting "The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil." I have a copy of it on my fridge. It really is how I want my garden to look. It's colorful, has a child playing on the path, and sunflowers lining the path. I had this effect in my potager two years ago, so I am going to return to that theme, only add whatever personal touches I can come up with! I finished the little walkway today to make the entrance to the garden nicer (and avoid tripping!) Between that being done and deciding what feeling I want the garden to have I am thrilled! lavender lass, it sounds like you have a good handle on your plan as well. I can just see the geraniums in pots, the sunflowers and lavender - beautiful. Not to mention the pumpkins and watermelon! Your nephew is very lucky to have you for an auntie! I am dying to post some photos and will as soon as I can.