spaghetina, pacifica def. has good pea weather and chard, greens ;) san carlos is very warm so you should have no problem with melons...i think it has similiar weather to san rafael (where i am), maybe even warmer...!! ************* Very nice. It is a good feeling, I know it. I picked about 8 Korean melons(small , oval, orange yellow color). 3 others had been half eaten by some creatures(I suspect rats). Four of them are still in the frig. By the way, your first pick seems to be overripe. How do I know it: First, it has no stem, second, when you cut it, seeds have made channels, and on one side you can see dicoloration and softening due to overripeness. Also, the seeds have broken their cage. Those seeds are perfect for saving. ************** Cyrus gardeneer: i did save the seeds but it is a hybrid so who knows what will grow from them. also, i would be surprised if it was overripe as it was still sort of crunchy and not super sweet throughout and i know they are supposed to be very sweet. also, the stem broke off like that due to my manhandling the poor melon. from what i read the melons are supposed to get yellow throughout on the outside and smell very fragrant and mine still had some green and only smelled if i put my nose right on it.

It's just a self-made flood and drain system that I'm only trying to grow 4 pepper plants in at the moment. Using a 400w metal halide. The resorvoir I fill with 22gal of water. I'd thought about using the old aquarium water but I figured I didn't know exactly what was in the water after it had been in the aquarium so I didn't want to try and use it and have to try and figure out how much nutrient I should mix with it to get the right proportions. I use the baking soda to raise the buffering capacity of the water for use in the aquarium. I figure it would also help in the hydroponics to keep the pH from swinging up and down to much. If the nutrients are being used up at a good rate, then the pH would fluctuate a good deal with such lower buffering capacity. Plants appear to be doing okay for the most part although the older leaves on my Scotch Bonnet have been curling upward and looking kind of splotchy(pale green and dark green). The Tepin has a little bit of upward curl to it also but that's about it. The Jamaican Hot Chocolate shows absolutely no bad signs. I hadn't thought about the nutrient being a bit strong even with the recommended dosage. I just took what was on the label as gospel. Thanks for the reply. I'm still trying to figure it out. I changed the nutrient and this time didn't add Equilibrium for the general hardness. Going to see if things still work out.

Me. It was nice on Saturday, so I moved the whole lot out into the sun, including the starter flat - with lid on. It must have gotten way hot in there because when I checked a couple hours later the soil was parched and most of the seedlings fried. The Anaheims and Orange Manzanos did okay, possibly because they have deep roots. But I lost: all four 7 Pot Brain Strains and a Jonah F1, two Espelettes, three (four?) Chocolate Habs and Scotch Bonnets, one maybe two Twilights, a Black Cobra, a BJ, possibly a Poblano, 4 or 5 Scorpions and Douglahs, and a couple others I've blocked from my memory. Also a little Ch. Hab that grew up without cotyledons and had set a nice fat leaf. I almost named that one. True to form, the immortal BJ with no cots or roots is doing fine (assuming that it's truly alive at all...) Several have stood back up with watering, but the cots/leaves are crispy. I'll be amazed if they have the energy to set new leaves. We'll see. Fortunately, most everything that looked independently healthy had already been moved to pots, so many of these seedlings were weaklings. Darwin is rarely so just.

What they'll need the most is TIME & Patience. As sometimes said here, they're on plant time, not people time.