Susan, Cheyenne Spirit was bred by Pan AM Seed and Keift Seed breeder Ping Ren in Illinois. I assume the seed is being produced in The Netherlands. I knew it was being trialed in the AAS Trial Gardens so have been watching it for a couple of years. Last year the seed was available from a handful of online retailers, and I almost purchased it then, but (mindful of the disappointment in Terra Nova's pricey new echinaceas the last few years) I really wanted to wait and see how this variety performed in the AAS Trials. Since "Cheyenne Spirit" was trialed in 37 AAS Trial Gardens across the USA and was selected as an AAS winner, I have high hopes for it. There's no way to know, though, without trying it and seeing how it does, which is precisely what I intend to do. I feel like any plant that was trialed for multiple years in AAS Trial Gardens in the recent drought years has to be really good to emerge a winner. I think the watermelon looks very interesting. My dad's family grew Moon and Stars when he was a kid, and I still plant it about 1 year out of 3. I'd grow it more often, but the plants take up so much space and I'd rather grow smaller refrigerator-sized melons. Thus, I find this new watermelon very intriguing and likely will grow it in 2013 if seeds are available early enough, or in 2014. It looks like it would produce a nice melon that's larger than the refrigerator melons but not nearly as huge as the regular OP Moon and Stars. I already have my Grow List pretty much figured out for 2013, but I always leave a little room to try a few new things. We have a new fenced garden area with very sandy/silty soil that we used last year for the first time in about a decade. I had grown flowers and winter squash there before in and prior to 2006, but then the deer discovered the garden and that area wasn't fenced, so I stopped using it. This year I grew corn and 'Moon and Stars' watermelong there along with some Tahitian Melon winter squash and some drought-tolerant bush beans called Kebarika. That soil is so sandy that the moisture just ran right through it and I had to water and water and water those plants like crazy this past summer. After I amend that area's soil by adding a whole lot of organic matter and some chicken manure this winter, I think it will be a great place to grow watermelons and sweet potatoes, so that's likely where I'll plant both those crops this coming spring. I'd like to grow the new watermelon variety there. I find the color range of the Cheyenne Spirit echinaceas very intriguing and they'd look great with the other hot colors of plants like butterfly weed, Texas star hibiscus, and zinnias that I always grow in the veggie garden's flower border. I love hot colors in that area because those hot-colored flowers seem to attract oodles of pollinators. Dawn

I have Early Girl, SuperSweet 100, Delicious, Brandywine, and Everlast for this year. Early Girl always does great for me, I found some Bloody Butcher seeds at a nursery and next year I will start those from seed since several people have written that they like it better than early girl. I bought the Early Girl a few weeks ago at a local nursery and it is now showing bloom buds coming. I bought the SuperSweet100 at the same time. I hope its good, I alway get Sweet 100 and got the supersweet version by mistake. I found a Brandywine seeding at one of the nurseries I haunt. Cost me 3.89 for a 3 inch tall plant. grrrr I found some seeds and next year will grow my own. I have never grown this and am seeking an old fashioned beefsteak that is sandwich sized and has flavor to die for. I hope this fills the bill. A different nursery had Delicious. I had seed planted for this one but I bought it anyway. It is showing yellow on blossoms and it is only about 12 inches tall. So it is showing promice for early production. I found some Everlast seeds in the burpee specialty seeds at lowes and bought both packets they had. I have a couple of seeds planted. I cant find anything about this variety on the web. According to the package its a long keeper. Next year I am going to start all seeds in January. Does anyone have any extra Brandywine Suddeth seeds (sp) for trade? Or any other huge yummy op indeterminate for trade? I can go thu my seed box and see if I have anything to interest you. I know that I have Oregon Spring and a few other cold crop ones. pam

Hi all, new to the forum. :) Hubby and I are gardening in Wheat Ridge. 2013's good, bad, and just plain weird... Yellow Cherry went steroidal on us, breaking down the biggest tomato cage we had. It had so many fruits on just one plant that I made tomato juice out of self-defense (it was delicious, btw). Golden Jubilee was a big disappointment. It ripened one fruit, which I never tasted because my visiting six-year-old niece was so enthralled with it that I gave it to her. The plant unfortunately never produced any more, but I'm hoping it was a good investment in the next generation of gardeners. Siletz had what I ended up calling "Teenage Mutant Ninja Tomatoes". It producedvery well, but the fruits were the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Almost all of them had what looked like stubby fingers growing from inside the fruit out through the blossom end. We later heard that there was a seed lot that had this strange mutation - evidently our packet was from that lot. (I had thought it was maybe our proximity to Rocky Flats!) They tasted fine, but were very weird-looking! Burgundy okra was a definite winner. I grew it out front in a rose bed we'd built that we didn't have the budget to plant entirely in roses. The okra flowers were pretty and occasioned lots of questions from neighbors who didn't know what it was, and we got enough okra pods to freeze a few bags. We haven't used it all up yet. Sugar Snap peas (the pole type) - another big winner. Nice fat, sweet pods and lots of them. We froze a bunch of these and are still enjoying them. Giant Marconi peppers - our first successful year with these. They really were giant! Good producer, too. Brassicas in general did rather poorly for us this year. Spring broccoli didn't produce till October, only one head of cabbage survived, and the cauliflower died the moment it was set out. Hard to tell with the potatoes. They got caught in that September deluge as we were starting to dry down the vines, and almost every spud split because of the sudden excessive moisture. They taste good, but look awful. That was our 2013...

Though it's difficult to be sure (having only read two and a half of them) I think it's the best short list since 2005 - which was an exceptional year. (I didn't agree with the winner, though!) I agree that Vernon God Little and The Gathering are two of the poorer winners of the prize. The first in particular is a dreadful book in my opinion. Mind, I remember watching a TV program on the evening of the prize award (when VGL won), and they had four people on to discuss the six books - it was obvious that all those four also thought it was the best. It was the last one discussed of the six, and there was an obvious "buzz" around all of them as they started to discuss it - it clearly appealed to all of them too. So perhaps it's just you and me...