I got the seeds locally at the Home depot off the Burpee display, but they are available at any decent online seed retailer as well. For the record, they are also considerably hardier than the striped commercial type.
sigh
I’m planning on marking the new baby watermelons with my name, and putting up a sign of “don’t harvest the watermelons (fucker)”. My guess at this point is that some of the other gardeners - or their kids or someone who wandered in - figured since it was in the communal vine growing area, it was fair game. Which is bullshit, but it’s a lot easier to take something if it isn’t labeled.
I think the corn growers have already figured this out, as they’ve put up signs and tied ribbons around their corn. I’ll be doing the same.
grrrrrrr
I really feel for you. I regularly have stuff nicked from my community garden plot (the latest was my ready to pick lettuces). Some due to ignorance (we have the odd person who thinks community garden = everything belongs to everyone) and some due thieving amoral scum.
And the best bit - we are a very small carden community with only 17 members. I have an idea of the culprits but no proof. GAH!
I support this pitting. Growing your own stuff is just…I don’t know if there’s a word for it. Ownership doesn’t cover it; it’s like those jerks stole your babies, man. All of my plants in my yard are my babies. People messing with my babies gets me very upset.
Meet me in this thread.
I’m glad I only have to battle nature for the procedes of my garden. If I were to have to ward off neighbors too, I’d never have time to go to work.
Communal gardens and any not where you live are ones you never get food from. You could try branding them so you at least can prove the bastards stole them from you. When older you can scratch the rind, or you could grow them on top of something like a wood stamp and the impression will be indented in the rind.
Don’t forget the next step in the sign joke.
The next day the farmer goes to the patch and sees a sign that says now you have two melons that are poisoned.
Crooks will destroy what they can no longer steal. That way nobody gets it.
You eat your own young?! :eek:
phouka, if you find out who did it, just shoot 'em. No jury would convict!
Sure they would. It’s against hunting regulations to shoot idiots over a baited field.
[Linus]
S’okay, phouka, they’ll have The Great Watermelon to answer to.
[/Linus]
Okay, I have to share this story from my father’s career as a small-town police officer.
There was a fellow named Cofer in the town I grew up in who had a watermelon garden that was to die for. He got two or three harvests every summer of the biggest, sweetest watermelons in five counties. There were occasional small thefts, but for the most part people left Mr. Cofer alone and bought his watermelons at local markets.
One mid-summer, a trio of young teen-age boys stayed out past curfew with the expressed purpose of stealing and eating one of Mr. Cofer’s about-to-be-harvested watermelons. The later admitted that, having taken one, they started smashing the rest for the sheer glee of watching the things burst open. They ruined nearly the entire crop. My father ran the miscreants to ground the next day and they were hauled, in due time, before the town magistrate. His justice was swift.
Knowing that their parents were more willing to simply reimburse Cofer for his crop, and that the lads would thus learn nothing, the municipal judge ordered the three to work for Mr. Cofer for free until the next crop was ready to harvest. For weeks, the boys showed up almost every day, weeding, watering and culling the watermelons. When the second crop was ready, my father and two other police officers helped Cofer spend one evening harvesting the watermelons. When the boys arrived at the plot the next day expecting to harvest the melons, all were gone. Dad had busted open a couple and scattered the pieces around for effect. It didn’t take the boys long to see through the ruse, but in those first moments of shock and disbelief, they learned their lesson.
Too bad that same lesson can’t be visited on those who took phouka’s melons.
Gotta say, I love these two sentences paired together. 
When I saw the titleI thought VC03 was back with a race baiting thread.
I commiserate on the theft of your melons.
Except phouka has been around forever.
Thanks for posting them. Now I want to try and grow them, too. Since you’re also in Florida I don’t need to ask if they grow here. Although, I’m probably one zone away from you but I’m still going to try.
Yeah, before I saw the name I mean.
Forgot to add my sympathies to phouka. Since this is connected to the church perhaps you could mention it to the pastor/minister/priest and maybe they could mention in their sermon how the thief IS GOING TO BURN IN HELL!!!
Or you could get a mention in the church newsletter if you have one.
My sympathies, phouka.
The late James Crockett sadly said there is no cure for finger blight. A few things occasionally work, though. If a sign announcing GENETICALLY MODIFIED PLANTS doesn’t work, you may have to get a melon collie to watch over your vines next year.
Heh - I grow mostly plants for pretty, not for eating. I do have some raspberries, strawberries, and nanking cherries, though - they gladly give up their fruity lives for me, their doting caretaker.
Well, it’s a Unitarian Universalist church, so the most we would advocate is a harsh talking to in the afterlife. Maybe a noogie.
Sometimes being a liberal religion that espouses universal salvation is such a drag.