I was not sure where to go to say hello & meet folks.. I hope this is the spot !

I have been doing my level best to garden with out chemicals for a few years now, and trying out new techniques to help improve upon my gardens and orchards.

I live in zone 5, of the PNW. Right now is our dry summer season, but the nights are cooling back down, and I recently went and planted more seeds. I want to plant some carrots, turnips, and parsnips as well.

A few issues I have had , gardening where I live :
1.Not being able to get any melons ..although I start with good plants and they have everything I thought they would need..my other plants produce, but my melons simply make vines and look and sad. Either the fruit they do make is tiny Or they never seem to make any at all.
2. Slugs. But, considering where I live..thats Normal !
3. Having verticillium wilt in my soil. Yay.
4. Trying to start a new compost pile this year, using old semi-rotten straw or hay bales to surround it. This is to HOPEFULLY help keep my 3 dogs out of the compost and provide a good area for the compost to rot.
5. Weeds like thistles, those nasty little grasses that blow, tansy ( I have horses ) and the other little nasty weeds that have those clumping heads full of stickers.
6. Some creature ( darn dogs ) deciding to go and dig a nice hole in the middle of a raised bed after my carrots or other sprouts were starting to come up nicely.

I hope you guys can all relate !

I look forward to learning a lot more.Happy Gardening !

Welcome Jane! You can ask us any ol' thing, someone will have the answer.

Hi Jane and welcome!

Your melons may not be getting pollinated. They will make "tiny fruit" below the female flower, but if pollen is not transferred to it from the male flowers, then it will shrivel and fall off. If you don't have enough bees in your garden to do the work for you, you can pollinate by hand. Some people use a paintbrush to transfer the pollen - I just pluck off the male flowers and press the anthers to the stamen on the female blossom. Do it in the early morning when the flowers are open - the flowers last for only one day and if you wait until afternoon or evening, they may already be closed.

Good idea for the compost piles - I'm planning to do the same (surround w/ straw bales) for the winter.

Mulching can help minimize your weeds - with the added benefit of keeping your soil moist, although in the PNW you may not have a problem w/that.

Good luck w/ everything!

Hello Jane and welcome.

We have 3 big dogs that live outside. They live next door at my sis' DD hoouse, but they spend hours over in our yard making themselves at home by digging holes, etc. For the under the steps holes I put some dead branches that I pruned to make a bamboo pole. I suppose any kind would do, I just made sure the tiny ends of the branches were to the outside of the spot making it a real sticky situation and not a comfortable spot to try to dig. The flower and veggie beds I try to put some kind of fence around. Even if it is a low one, like a foot or so, it seems to discourage them from entering. Especially if they are reminded a few times that it is not okay to be in the fence areas.

I am going to put my prunings to use making low bentwood fences for my next raised veggie bed. In the front yard, we have those metal sections that are about 18-24" long that you poke in the ground ab out 6". We got the darker ones so they would blend and disappear into the bed rather than stick out like the white ones do. They are pretty cheap from the Mart stores, etc.

I like the idea of making my own, though so that is wwhat I will do in the future instead of burning all those prunings that are too large to compost.

Welcome Jane! It's nice to see another PNW person. I'm in SW Pdx in the hills.

For melons, I'll second the thought that maybe they're not pollinating. If you don't have enough male and female flowers (with the bulb) and/or not a lot of bees you may need to take nature into your own hands, get a small art project type paintbrush and pollinate them yourself or try the male flower nuzzling trick (I've not done that but sounds good; maybe hum a few bars from Marvin Gaye tune at the same time). Another tip for melons in the PNW where early fall rains and damp weather in general just happens, put a few layers of cardboard or an old strip of carpet under the melons as they mature.

Happy melon mating!

Oh, and I wanted to comment about slugs. This year my entire raised bed garden is surrounded by wood chips and the paths leading around the gardens and yard are all crushed filbert shells. Take that you slugs! The only slugs I've seen this year were on the underside of a piece of wood that was near the raised deck so I can't complain about that. So I'm pretty happy about not seeing hardly any this year.

I love my filbert shell paths; it's an Oregon by-product and they're beautiful. I just got my OG magazine today and two Oregonians are quoted about good materials for paths, but these are not mentioned. I'll have to write in.

1. The fruits are not getting pollinated. Look closely at the melon vines and you should see two types of blossoms, one with a bulbous growth behind the flower that is the female blossom and that bulbous growth is the ovary that will, if pollinated by something, grow into the fruit. The other, the male blossom does not have that bulbous growth, but the pollen from that male blossom needs to be transfered to the female blossom, someway. Either an insect or you.
2. In a good, healthy garden, well mulched the environment is one that slugs like and you will have slugs. I seldom see any samage from the slugs I have, apparently they find enough to feed on without munching on the plants.
3. The cure for Verticillium is to change your soil into a good, healthy soil well endowed with organic matter. I correspond with people all over the world that have told me they have done just that.
4. Compost piles are good, dogs can be a problem in compost piles.
5. Keep in mind that "weeds" often bring up nutrients from deep in your soil and can be composted. "Weeds" in the blossom stage are full of nutrients and are a very good addition to any compost pile.
6. Critters can be a pain, difficult to keep out often. All we can do is learn to live with them. Someone once told me that you always plant a garden big enough to supply your needs as well as those of all of the other critters.

Hi.
I had never heard of helping my melons along with the pollinating. I will give that a try now. I just could not figure out what I was doing wrong !
I know those hazelnut shells are fantastic ! I have heard other people rave about them. My only issue is that I like to be barefoot in my garden and they hurt my feet like the dickens .

Welcome.

And yes my melons must be related to yours...I feel your pain.

Welcome to the OG forums Jane.

I live on the dry and warm side of Washington State. When I lived on the wet side of the state I had a slug problem too and I also had trouble with melons. Now that I am on the warm side of the state it is too warm and dry for slugs and the melons grow much better. But even over here I have to hand pollinate the melons and squash.