Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 24 Entries. Thursday, January 9 View Page https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/grafting-epigenetically-modified-rootstock-yields-surprise Attention Melon growers- Should we be stressing our rootstock before grafting? It may have great potential for us.   Wednesday, January 15 View Page These are some of my favorite seed companies to order from. I love reading the catalogs. Not sure how many more years they’ll bother to print these out and mail them. I know this is quite expensive expensive and everyone does everything online these days. Anyways, I’ll enjoy them for now, even if their days are numbered.   Thursday, January 16 View Page This massive Norway spruce lost its central leader at a young age. You can see the pitchfork like growth as the new leaders were competing for dominance. Sometimes little natural mishaps, like losing a central leader can lead to a really cool looking tree in old age.   Saturday, January 18 View Page My daughter bought me a bag of these gummy candies the other day. Who knew Shaq had his own candy.   Saturday, January 25 View Page Two dwarf citrus trees I bought at Home Depot this past summer for 4.95 I couldn’t pass it up. I brought them home and repotted them. One of them Looks like it’s showing a nutrient deficiency. My first guess was that it’s iron. so I bought some iron plus Micros. I no longer think it is iron as iron deficiency shows up first in the new growth. This appears to be on the older growth. Still I almost guarantee that the iron plus micronutrients will fix it. Any citrus experts out there? dale from Australia what do you think?   Saturday, January 25 View Page This is a basic seed starting set up. It doesn’t have to be super complicated. These are cheap Home Depot shop lights, they stay on all the time and they are energy efficient. the key is to keep the lights right on top of the seedlings.   Saturday, January 25 View Page Here is a flat of seeds planted in moist soil. I put a garbage bag around it so I don’t have to worry about watering it plus it gives it a few extra degrees and it stabilizes the temperature.   Saturday, February 8 View Page With the advent of legalized gambling through out much of the country it has got me thinking about how much growing a giant pumpkin is like gambling. You have to choose a seed and then front all this money and labor in the hopes of winning. Just like gambling, the more you put in, the more you can potentially win. Also like gambling, none of us are actually making a profit. Anything we make goes into paying for this years crop and if you are lucky, some of next years crop. Perhaps someone could actually come out on top if they won a major weigh off then just quit and walked away from the hobby. No one ever does that. They go at it again next year and maybe they win again.... But it is likely they lose a few to splits,rot or YVD etc. If they are fortunate, the grower will get at least one fruit to a weigh off every year. (this would be analogous to having enough parlays to win at least one of them)   Thursday, March 6 View Page About a month ago smallmouth made an inquiry about alfalfa. I found this article in an old organic gardening book from the 1980s hopefully this comes through and you can read it Luke.   Thursday, March 6 View Page Here is the article. Probably more than anyone really cares to know about alfalfa.   Thursday, March 6 View Page Page 2   Thursday, March 6 View Page Page 3   Thursday, March 6 View Page Page 4   Thursday, March 6 View Page Last page.   Saturday, March 15 View Page There is some really good and accurate information on the internet for melon grafting. This honest and informative video shows you everything you need to know. LOL. YouTube   Sunday, March 16 View Page Here is a photo of the water test from our well   Sunday, March 16 View Page Grafting doesn’t have to be pretty. You can see how ugly these grafts are! The most important factor with grafting is good contact of the vascular tissue, then comes high humidity and warmth for proper healing. I decided to do the one cotyledon graft on these because the squash rootstock and the watermelons were a pretty good match in terms of hypocotyl diameter. After spending almost a week in the healing chamber they are ready to get potted up and put in the greenhouse. You can see some have failed to take. But I wanted to keep it real with you and show you that too! Sometimes I get 100 percent other times... I don't. Not exactly sure what happened, the more you grafting yoo do, the better feel you get for it. I will be doing my giant watermelons this week and the seedlings and cotyledons look a lot better, So I feel really confident after this test run. Seedless are the hardest to do in my experience. The giant watermelon seeds were germinated at a cooler temperature (80degrees) and they all have nicely shaped cotyledon leaves. For some reason my cotyledon leaves come out a little messed up when I germinate them too hot. (in the 90's). Seedless will not tolerate cooler germination temps. Even at 80 degrees I may have had some issues. At 90 I got 100 Percent germ.   Sunday, March 16 View Page I will hit the long hypocotyl with dip and grow to promote rooting. It will have very nice roots coming out in no time.   Sunday, March 16 View Page That looks a little better. The seedling is an orange crisp, which is a seedless watermelon. seedless watermelon seeds are a buck a piece. It is costly to screw them up when a graft fails. It is worth the risk for me, because seedless are very popular and I don't want to have any problems with fusarium wilt. Which I likely will get if I don't graft. I had to start the seedless watermelon almost a week before the rootstock because the newly sprouted seedless watermelon seedlings are so small and lack the vigor of a normal watermelon seed. (small seeded cultivars in general are harder to successfully graft, fortunately Carolina Cross and Jumbo Black Diamonds have larger seeds!)   Wednesday, March 19 View Page A couple of years ago my giant melon growing friend Jake Holloway mentioned this substance called chitosan that he was trialling in his Georgia garden. I didn't really think much of it at the time. The past couple of days I have been doing a bit of research on it. It seems like pretty interesting stuff with great potential in agriculture. YouTube If you like the video and listen to the whole thing I have to tell you something..... You are a huge Nerd! A plant nerd to be exact. (my wife tells me I am one all the time). I guess, We all have to be nerds about something!   Wednesday, March 26 View Page I decided to send out some soil samples I will be using the free Connecticut ag experiment station soil testing lab in New Haven. . I am a bit scared to find out my results. It’s been a few years since I’ve had it tested.   Wednesday, March 26 View Page Starting to get some composted manure spread on the watermelon patch I hope to get everything disced in and ready to plant within the next month and look for an early May planting date.   Wednesday, March 26 View Page This is in my barn. My daughter saw the "Hoeing ain’t easy" and Bought it for me. My son got me the Bigfoot one on his trip out to Washington last summer.   Wednesday, March 26 View Page This is the Atlantic giant pumpkin patch. my son Ethan and my son Abel will be growing a giant pumpkin this year in this spot. I am taking the year off of giant pumpkins to work on a squash genetics project. I will be using a Richard Mace seed, which is a cross between a 2365 wolf and a 1109 jutras squash I will be growing out 20 to 30 of them and choosing only the squash plants, I Will then cross squash with squash, and hopefully produce a new squash seed with lots of potential