European Gardening: Gardening in Southwest France, 1 by greenhouse_gal

greenhouse_gal wrote:
What's an Ogen type of melon? I could always google Santon, though, I guess! Here's a description of the French method:

http://gwmarcha.perso.neuf.fr/taillemelon.htm

There were abbreviated instructions on the seed packet of Précoce du Roc, but never having heard of such a practice before I had no idea how to apply it. When you try to do it, though, it's not nearly as obvious where to do the pruning as those diagrams make it appear, of course.

The tomato story is something I really cherish, and it's so neat to have the fruits every year. We have never lived in France; we were really tempted to look for property when we were there both times, but we have a very demanding place here and also kids and grandkids whom we'd hate to see so little of, so we realized it wasn't a good idea, either to move or have a vacation home. So we watch TV5Monde and read L'Express and try to keep up just for fun. We have friends there; one couple lives in Chalabre and the other just moved from that area to the Dordogne.

Here's the painting of the house, by the way: