Rocky Mountain Gardening: Hot Peppers & Mellons, 1 by mraider3

mraider3 wrote:
Your right greenjay, I should not have been that surprised at that one. I have decided however to add a couple of twists to this method for hot peppers. Strawbails, black paper mulch, a floating row cover or window panels from the recycle center, and a soaker hose instead of a drip feeder hose. A double row planting on either side of the soaker hose on 12-inch centers would allow me a hundred plus plants in a 60 ft row. That's three times the plants for the same amount of area in the past. The strawbails on either side of the double row and at the ends would produce a min-hot house. The hay bails would providing ancorage for the black paper mulch and the floating row cover if I chose that over the window panels.

Your concensus on mellons seems to be pretty much what I have seen and heard here. Muskmellons...maybe. I tried Edens Gem and Sugar Babys a couple of years ago and neither ripen by harvest time. I may try deep trenching semi-compost horse manure/hay plus black paper mulch with night time covers. I made up some 1-gallon plastic milk jug covers with the bottoms removed and two coat hanger wire stakes for anchoring them down. Will still need to add a 5-gallon bucket with a heavy rock over the milk jugs to keep them from blowing over. I'm hoping a 30 day jump start with this night time double cover method would allow sufficient time for short seasoned mellons to fully ripen. I direct seeded mellons in the past, but I may try transplants next season to see how that works.

As you can tell from the pic, R.J. was not too pleased with grandpa's previous attempt. I promised her I would do a better job next season.