New World Datsuns...

I tried going to the dark site I use last night, it turned out that the road had washed out the last few miles of the steep climb, Elk Rock viewpoint/turnout on the freeway is about 15 miles short of Johnson Ridge, it is likely around 3000' MSL, I tried that place and except for the smoke it was alright, I was able to observe several Galaxies I cannot see from my backyard, I found everything I know except the Cresent Nebula, I was able to observe all the Globular clusters that I know of in the sky, even ones I have found in the past that are not even in the books I have, but nothing was sharp and nothing took more powerful eyepieces, things just got fuzzier, the smoke was terrible, I could barely see the Moon when it came up, it was a very dim Orange, I got a sky meter reading of 21.29 at around 11pm, by 12pm it was 2090 something(getting worse), so I packed up and left for home, I left for the dark site at 7:30pm and got home at and unloaded at 2:30am, it was not a waste of time, but I did not find anything new to look at like I normally do.

Here is the new travel dob, it is lighter(65lbs) and is easier to use.

I might get a few watermelons this year, normally around this time I have a few watermelon starts(small watermelons), but this year I have several larger watermelons that were already the size of a baseball when I took these photos last week, one is now the size of a softball.

Here are the two spots that have watermelon plants, they have merged together to look like one fat spot.


And here are photos of the watermelons growing, there are several.










Here is a photo of the wall that has the trellis type cucumber called "Tasty Green", last year or the year before I posted a photo of a large one, likely half these plants were grown from seeds from that cucumber I took the photo of, I have likely already ate over a dozen cucumbers already, I try to eat them when they are medium sized as large ones are like eating a whole meal, its hard to completely eat the whole thing, they are never sour no matter how large they get, well at least so far.


Next year I need to only plant 3 cucumber plants in one planter/spot instead of 6+ plants, I worry that some will die and I want to be sure I have plenty that live, on the seed packet it says they do not do well if the roots are disturbed, when I start the seeds in small containers and transfer them to the ground the roots sometimes get disturbed.

Looks great man. I didn’t even know you did watermelons.

Taterhead wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 8:19 pm Looks great man. I didn’t even know you did watermelons.

I have tried every year when I expanded the garden back to full size 3 years ago??, but as I recall I have never grown a good sized watermelon that was worth eating, they have never ripened properly.

This year is the first year I recall where I had an actual watermelon started of any reasonable size in July, I bought a couple starts from the "Grown In Camas" nursery that were of decent size, in the past I have always started my own watermelon plants from seeds, a few of my starts are in them planters also.

I have watermelons in the front also that I grew from my seeds, they do not have any watermelon starts yet, I expect I will not get any watermelons from them plants, I need to enclose that small green house I made and start my own seeds earlier, use a heater if it gets to cold to keep them from getting frozen and killing them.

I do not know about other areas, but I do not see any honeybees in my garden anymore, I used to see them all the time, all I see now is them Black/yellow spot on their back bumble Bees, they pollinate everything so that is why I have Strawberries, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, ect, I am wondering if it is because I live in an area that has no open fields anymore, we used to have open fields but they have condos/duplexes now, I used to have Goldfinches also, I have not seen a Goldfinch in years now, maybe the bees have died off in this area, I used to see them everywhere when I was a kid, we had to watch where we stepped when barefooted even walking across the grass(with weeds) when I was a kid, makes me wonder if I should get a small beehive for my garden if there is such a thing as a small beehive.

From what I understand beekeeping is a whole other animal. We didn’t have many bees around here this year, either. As a matter of fact, I let a lot of clover grow in the backyard to kind of attract them more so.

I picked a Watermelon today, it was about the same size as personal watermelons at the store and that is the type I bought from the nursery, that is all they sell as normal watermelon plants(big ones) do not grow well in this area, they do not have time to ripen.



I put one of them small cups beside it when I took this photo above, as I said it is about the same size as the personal ones in the store, it is on the large size, and it had a bright yellow spot on the bottom where it was resting, a way brighter spot than the ones at the store have, I hope it is ripe.

Check to see if it has a little curly tendril near the stem. If so and it is turning yellow and dying (the tendril) it should be ready.

That’s the newest way I’ve heard how to tell it’s ripe. There is also the yellow spot like you said (you want it yellow not white)and the tap on the side method, should have a deep thud sound, not high pitched.

They usually take about 100 days of growing.

Good luck

It was not ripe, what a waste of a Watermelon, but I have around 6 more growing.

It is a type of Watermelon that matures faster than normal type Watermelons, that is why that is the only type the "Grown in Camas" nursery sells, the bottom was white/yellow, it was completely white inside, I ate a few Spoonfuls and it did not really taste much like a Watermelon, so I threw it out in the garden to rot and go back into the soil.

I have about half a dozen different melon plants and haven't gotten past the flower stage yet. You're waaay ahead of me.

DRIVEN wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:58 pm I have about half a dozen different melon plants and haven't gotten past the flower stage yet. You're waaay ahead of me.

Do you have/see bees in your garden?

Fact is I have never had such a good result in my life as this year with Watermelons, I bought the Watermelon plants(starts) as soon as they had them at the "Grown in Camas" nursery, Next year/season I will start most my seeds earlier, I tried growing the lettuce last winter with poor results, in the next couple months I will start some Romain Lettuce in a few pots/containers and try to keep them alive over the winter using them lights for fresh lettece.

I replaced 4 fence posts over the last 3 days, I made this thing that would fit inside the square hole in the concrete that spread apart when I tried pulling up on it, it worked fine pulling out the cement that held the 4X4 post, but it would not pull the other 3 out, I had to use a pick to get them out.

Maybe I should have made the ends that grip the cement slightly pointed so they dug into the cement better, I have one other post to replace in the back in the house that no one lives in right now, I will grind a point and see if that works better.

The easiest way to describe what I made is to say I put a hinge down in the 44" square hole that has a bolt in the middle, when I pull up the hinge spreads out and jambs, the 8' pry bar I use gives me the leverage to pull the cement block out of the ground, I have used this before with good results but this time it did not work except for the first one.

I had a customer that was getting rid of a bunch of them cement blocks used for landscaping walls, they are rough rounded in the front, I had made a planter several years ago after pulling out a Juniper and I planted Blueberry plants in it, I expect I will do that again on this side, the wall now stretches from my east property line all the way to my driveway, here is the truck loaded with all the blocks I brought home, I bought the wall and wall top blocks for 75 cents each.





Here is the original planter.







Here is where the new planter is going to be.





And here it is with most the blocks in place.







And here it is as of today.







It was going to be too big of a hassle to buy 7 more used blocks, so I bought some new ones from Home Depot, I tried Lowes first but they did not have the same type, I found some used ones in the St Johns area near the St. Johns bridge, but I would have spent more money driving all the way over there for $7.00 worth of blocks, and I hate driving over to Portland and avoid it if at all possible.

I also bought these big flat flagstone pieces(7 of them I think), I plan on using them for my southern sky observing spot to get me out of the dirt, when the wind blows and it has been dry for a long time my mirror gets covered with dust, me walking around in it does not help, so I will likely put them in place over the next few days.

It has been very hot lately, we had 109 degrees a few days ago, 104 degrees day before yesterday, and a 102 degrees yesterday, it has been close to 100 degrees at 8pm every one of those nights, the clear sky chart has forecast clear, transparent, and good to very good seeing, all these nights have been terrible, one night I was only able to see 9 stars in the sky, last night was better but still not that great, I believe humidity has been the issue.

This morning I put the flag stones in place for my southern observing spot.







Most the time was spent getting them level, then when they were in place I used some other blocks to fill in the west side.

I wish I had enough 1.5" X 8" X 16" blocks to fill/cover the path leading to that spot, what I have is used in the covered area on the west side of the house, I call it the tunnel where I used to keep the Roadster and NL320, but they are in the garage now and all my big tools(tablesaws/bandsaws) are in there now, the only thing still in the garage is the drill press, I do not really want to take them from that area to cover that path although I would really like that path covered as it becomes a dust path since it never gets wet anymore unless it rains.

Not sure what I am going to do next, I need to put new U-joints in a driveline for the 521 KC turbodiesel, but that is not an emergency, but when one gets right down to it nothing is an emergency anymore, that oil sensor(dual type) that the light side of the circuit had quit working so the light was on all the time, it was very annoying, but I have a gauge so I know I have oil pressure, well it started working correctly again so that fixed itself at least temporarily, and it was not a cheap part either, all the parts are on the counter waiting.

Well I finally figured I had enough new Strawberry starts to make another row, what I do is every time a Strawberry plant has one of them shoots come out I put a cup with dirt in it at just the right distance away from the parent plant, I water it and the start makes roots, once the cup has roots I can see(clear plastic cup) I cut the shoot off and plant it where I want it.

I believe I had around 15 starts, some themselves had shoots so when I planted them Strawberry starts I planted them in such a way that the shoot would start another plant in the row right next to it, this way I would have a row of 18 plants after them shoots have rooted, I also have 11 more plants started in cups in case any of the plants I planted today do not make it.



I suppose I will get enough new starts to possibly make one more row, I do this because if I plant them before the fall these plants will bear fruit(Strawberries)next spring, most do not think about this and wait till the spring to plant Strawberry plants and it takes till the next year(growing season) before they will get any Strawberries, I personally do not understand why Nurseries do not sell Strawberry plants year round, I talked to a Nursery owner and he told me that the suppliers do not sell dry root Strawberry plants anymore unless they buy 5000+ at a time(places like Shortys have more than one Nursery, or maybe one place buys a huge amount and sells them in smaller lots to other Nurseries), so they buy them and put them in containers and sell them for a lot more than they paid as they have to take the time to buy containers and dirt and plant them and grow them to a sellable size.

I expect Driven may have issues with the area/soil he lives in and Strawberries do not do well there, I do know that if I do not water them enough, they do not do well, this is why I have automatic watering and why I grow in trenches, the water stays where the plants are so I only have to pull weeds in the trenches, they do not grow in between until it starts raining, then I have to spend a lot of time weeding.

I have never really mentioned this before, the two rows of Strawberry plants I have started since removing all my Strawberry plants because of contamination I used what I had already made which was Polyethylene pipe(black pipe) for automatic watering, it is what I already had and did not need to be purchased since I had it around, I have ran out of that pipe and I will never use it again because it does not stay straight, I like PVC pipe, since it is not under pressure it does not need to be cemented together, I just drill holes where needed and install it on stakes that I make out of PVC pipe/fittings also, PVC is much easier to work with, and I already had a lot of fittings from when I had a fish room.

I thatched the front lawn today, I have never done that before, one area I did twice, there was more dead moss than grass, I had a giant pile in my work truck bed but it smashed down easily so it did not cost that much to get rid of.

I will know in a couple weeks if I have any lawn at all now, there were bare areas, I had treated the lawn with a week killer and then a moss killer later, it turned out one area was all crab grass, them areas are bare now, I will spread some grass seed and rake it in to the dirt and water it a lot, hopefully it will look decent.

Good luck. I have had a hard time with grass seeding my backyard. My problem is I have a gigantic water oak tree that I refuse to cut down and it pulls all the moisture from the ground. Grass doesn’t want to grow under it. From the picture, you’re not going to have that problem.

I spread grass seed out and I raked it in, I am going to watch it, I am trying to keep it damp as this area dries out fast, it is likely why Crabgrass took over in the first place.

I have more than 10 large Watermelons, most are the early to ripen type that the Nursery sells(not as large as the big ones in the store and they are much darker), but I started some seeds and have one very large one of the type the stores sell(it is the largest one I have right now) and a few smaller ones of the same type that have not caught up with the big one yet, I just read about them on the internet and they said they are time to harvest when that tendril dries out that Taterhead mentioned, they said if the field spot is a dark yellow(not white like the one I picked was), they suggested if the skin is dull it is time to pick it, and if it sounds hollow when rapped on with ones knuckles(not high on the list), I have almost all of them with that dried out tendril(brown), most the skin is shiny anymore except the big type which is still shiny on all of them, but this confuses me because the watermelons at the store have shiny skins, I will pick two tonight, one is dull and has not got any larger in a long time now, and I will pick the largest dull one that meets all the other suggested info above.

There was one other suggestion, if the flowering end of the watermelon gives a little when pressed on it is ripe, but if it gets too soft it is termed over ripe, I hope I have not let any get that ripe, also they mentioned when picked do not refrigerate until cut open, after cut open refrigerate and eat it fast as they spoil faster when refrigerated, they said store at room temps until cut open.

I forgot to download the photos of the Watermelon I picked, I might have waited too long, the one I picked was ripe, but close to being over ripe, I ate 2/3 of it last night, I will finish it today and pick another one, the one I picked was an older one, once they get established, they get big fast and one gets mixed up on which ones are the older ones, I have a really old one that has only made it to the size of a soft ball, it might be rotten inside.

I guess when I picked that one too early I went the other direction too far and started picking them too late now.