Ashley (just sent you an email), We only live a couple hours apart and we see the same trees at big box and nurseries. You're probably seeing "ultra" on the Pacific Groves trees, right? Some are in bags (bareroot) at various places and some in the fiberpot containers (Lowes). If so, you can drop the term "ultra" and just consider it dwarf. Dwarf and semi-dwarf are what you're aware of: "regular trees on lower vigor rootstocks". These are prolific at nurseries and big box stores alike. Genetic dwarf, aka Miniatures or "true dwarf" are more rare, they are "dwarf trees on whatever (typically regular sized) rootstock". I think you already understand stocks especially how dwarf stocks ideally encourage fruit at younger age (early bearing) and retain a heavier fruit set (precocious). Each stock is different in various properties like size reduction, early bearing, preciousness, disease resistance, soil tolerance, and so forth. The rootstock is *mostly* what makes dwarf and semi-dwarf so small -- the lower vigor. The scion of certain varieties can be somewhat dwarfing and so can their tolerance of summer pruning. It ALL depends on variety, rootstock, and growing conditions. Thus why I've spent countless hours researching the various stocks and varieties before I go buying and planting gobs of them in my yard. Take the Babcock peach, very common. It can be grafted onto Lovell as full sized, on Citation is considered semi-dwarf, on Pumiselect called dwarf (PG calls it Ultra) but Babcock will never be a miniature (genetic dwarf). Just as Necta-Zee (another newer genetic dwarf) will never be a semi-dwarf or full sized tree. The mini's are very small, though their size differs based on variety, but many are 3 feet tall (unpruned) after 2 years old in the ground, whereas the PG ultra-dwarf could be like 6 feet by then. LE Cooke (near Visalia) also produces miniature trees, but I'm not sure the volume since I've only found a couple local nurseries that have ever had any -- and those nurseries don't plan to stock them anymore. The folks at LE Cooke have not responded to my inquiries. Nevertheless, they have an awesome website with cool photos of their genetic dwarfs. Here is a link that might be useful: Take a look at LE Cooke's Site

planatus does bring up a good point about the round vs oblong varieties. It seems this melon has already been crossed to plenty of other stuff. Either of you know how that works genetically? cc definitely looks like the definition of oblong to me, which makes me think oblong is the way to go, but I also love variation and making new things. IF I were to put round m&s to cc, are the results going to remotely predictable? I was mostly planning to look for the heaviest weight I could sense thats the first thing I'll be going for. Maybe down the road I'll worry about mixing taste/resistance into it, but for the first step, I just want to make big cool melons. I cant find it, but I saw some seed someone developed that made the m&s look slightly pear shaped, and I thought that might have been from crossing round to oblong, but I thought round was typically an absolute trait as opposed to something line bred. maybe there are both. I wish I had bookmarked that page. I really love the idea of making new things. Growing the same stuff as everybody else would never be good enough for my personality type. An example would be roaches. I breed them as feeders for my pet lizards. Was that good enough? NO. lol. I had to select the most colorful, and the biggest, and start side roach colonies to try and improve things. Its really ingrained in me for some reason, so as I get more and more into gardening, I'll definitely be spending my life trying to make new things and improvements every year :) I love the idea of open pollinated plants because of their variation, and am not fond of patented seeds. I'd rather be the guy making cool new things in a natural way and sharing them with others, as opposed to letting some scientist do it for me then telling me I cant play with it in future generations. Its really a big part of the fun to me, even if I have some crops fail once in awhile because of that unpredictability. for whatever reason, I feel like this line should stay red fleshed. orange/yellow look nice, but not as yummy as red. I'll worry about colors down the road if I change my mind. I'm only 32, so i have plenty of time. If I grow a 200 lb melon with bright yellow moon and stars on it in the next decade, this will be a success. I have patients ;) Although realistically, it'll probably be done by someone in the south with my seeds which would still give me much satisfaction (I'm in MI so 200lb might be out of reach until I get south). anyway, sorry about rambling on so much. I like talking plants :)

Those reading this thread grow plants in media that range from sticky, extremely water retentive, and low in oxygen when they are saturated, to media that remain friable (uncompacted), highly oxygenated, and hold NO perched water when they are completely saturated. We cannot simply blame poor plant performance on watering habits, as I illustrated upthread. Neither, can we consider plant/water relationships without considering the media. When we blame poor plant performance on over-watering, what are we saying? On one hand, we might be saying that we are applying too much water to the soil, but is that really accurate? I don't think so. I think it's much more accurate to say the soil is holding too much water. Doesn't this then, shift the responsibility for root rot issues and poor plant performance to the media instead of the hand controlling the water can? The argument might be raised that all you need to do is water less - problem solved .....right? Not so fast. What happens when we water less, in small sips? Salts accumulate in soils from the fertilizers we apply and, as this happens, plants have increasing difficulty absorbing water and the nutrients dissolved in water from the soil. This is stress, and it assuredly affects the plants vitality and diminishes potential growth. Yes, you are able to work around this issue of accumulating salts by eliminating them from the soil with thorough flushing - frequently, but that is a time consuming process and several extra steps. Since the reason you need to flush the soil is because it is too water retentive in the first place, flushing it places the plant at risk for root rot - unless you take still additional steps to make sure that doesn't occur - like depotting the plant and placing it on newspaper over night so the water saturating the soil can be wicked into the newspaper and evaporate. So it sounds good to say it's a watering issue, and not a soil issue, but we can clearly see that it is not a watering issue. Lets look at the other end of the soil range for a moment. Consider a soil with particles that are large enough that the soil holds no water between soil pores. The descriptive terminology would be that it 'holds no perched water'. You can water this soil every hour of every day, yet it holds no water between it's particles. It does. however, hold plenty of water INSIDE the particles - water plants can easily access as they need it. As the plants access this water, their roots are totally surrounded by plenty of air - even immediately after you water to saturation. Even if you water again 10 minutes later, all the water drains from the pores between particles and air returns to the entire volume of soil. How do we need to treat plants in the heavy soil? We need to water them carefully, because if we over-water the soil remains saturated, anaerobic (airless) conditions prevail, and root function/metabolism suffers, the plant is stressed and grows with reduced vitality. While, and because we are watering in small amounts to prevent soil saturation, salts are accumulating and additionally stressing plants. This occurs in every planting you cannot water properly because the medium is too water-retentive. How do we treat plants in the porous soil? We water them until about 10-15% of the water we applied comes out the drain and move on to the next plant - no worries - repeat in a few days. From what I offered, it's easy to see that soils and watering are inextricably related, and that it is actually the SOIL that dictates how you are able to water. Roots die when subjected to saturated (anaerobic) conditions. They don't all die at the same time; they die incrementally with the finest of roots - the workhorses - dieing first, larger roots following finer roots as the length of exposure to anaerobic conditions increases. This process begins quickly, even if you can't see it, within hours of watering, and doesn't stop until the water in the soil is used up and air returns to the soil. At that point, the lost roots begin to regenerate. This is very stressful, and extremely expensive to the plant in terms of energy outlay. The energy the plant must put into root regeneration would have went to blooms, fruit, more leaves, branch extension, or an increase in biomass. It simply is bad for the growth process. These problems are entirely eliminated in soils at the other end of the spectrum, so 'no', we cannot so easily say that it is over-watering that causes these issues when in fact, they are directly related to soil choice. Heavy (water-retentive) soils are convenient and readily available everywhere, and there are the strategies I touched on to help you cope with the difficulties encountered when using them, but the price of convenience, as you see, is often measured in plant vitality. Al

Rob, you have a full calendar every which way. Hope the medicine men can find out what causes your reactions. Never had any allergies until after chemo, since then Flonase and Benadryl are on my daily diet. Did you really think LF listen to your advise? My two would not hear me but to a neighbor who stood right next to me and said the same thing. When they had to talk to their young ones, they had the same experiences and complained that they would not listen to them. I just laughed. Hope your winterizing gets finished. Love your updates.