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This winter, I’ve started a practice batch of watermelon grafting to improve my technique. I wanted to get a feel for the process before the main growing season begins.

First, I want to show the box I use to heal the grafts. It’s a simple wooden box that I’ve lined with aluminum, and I made an aluminum pan for the bottom.

Here is the box all set up with a glass top and removable insulated side panels

Inside the box, I have metal grates that sit above two germination mats. These mats provide gentle heat to help the grafts recover. I also use a small humidifier (not shown) to maintain the right humidity level. Both the heat and humidity are carefully controlled with an SHT 2000 controller, ensuring a stable environment for the grafts to heal successfully.

I dragged out my homemade germination box the other day to give it a good cleaning and sanitizing before the season starts. Figured I’d share a few photos while I was at it — always feels good to start getting things ready, even with all this snow still around.

Here is a look at the inside. I use an incandescent light bulb as the heat source and a small computer fan that comes on every time the light comes on.

To sort of dissipate the heat I made a stand to hold a ceramic pot over the light bulb.

Basically this is just an insulated box with a wooden floor that is covered with ceramic tile. The inside of the box is lined with aluminum metal. I have an old refrigerator wire shelf that sits in the middle of the box. This shelf actually determined the size that I made…

The GVGO silent seed auction is now running on the Big Pumpkins message board. The auction will be ending promptly at 12:00 noon EST on Saturday January 24th. A huge thanks to all the generous seed donors and bidders without whom this auction could not happen.

View the auction :

bigpumpkins.com/msgboard/ViewBoard.asp?b=125

Hi everyone,

I am just double checking that new posts are active through my personal profile (no admin access etc)

-Rebecca

The GVGO will be running the “2023 Mike Demars Memorial Mater Contest” again this year. This is a free contest for any paid GVGO member. The GVGO will provide prizes to each member of the winning team at the end of the season.

Growers that sign up will be asked for their personal best tomato weight, if they have one. If you were in last year’s contest I have your personal best recorded already. Once we have the final list we will put the growers in categories A, B or C depending on their personal best weight. Growers will be picked at random to form a team of three, so that each team has a grower out of each category. The whole idea of this contest is to have some fun, meet new people and learn some growing techniques from some of our veteran tomato growers. I encourage new tomato…

The GVGO will be running the “2023 Mike Demars Memorial Mater Contest” again this year. This is a free contest for any paid GVGO member. The GVGO will provide prizes to each member of the winning team at the end of the season.

Growers that sign up will be asked for their personal best tomato weight, if they have one. If you were in last year’s contest I have your personal best recorded already. Once we have the final list we will put the growers in categories A, B or C depending on their personal best weight. Growers will be picked at random to form a team of three, so that each team has a grower out of each category. The whole idea of this contest is to have some fun, meet new people and learn some growing techniques from some of our veteran tomato growers. I encourage new tomato…

Some farmer from Komoka was on the radio today......you know this guy?

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-80-afternoon-drive/clip/16174644-this-veggie-grower-komoka-grew-gigantic-8-lb-tomato

Hi Folks, the weighoff season is upon us and our members are starting to make the news and email photos of their new personal bests, etc. Please help revive some traffic to our messageboard and post your photos and a brief comment or two about your accomplishments. Feel free to also post them on our GVGO Facebook group page as well but keep in mind, some of our members don't go on Facebook.

I'll start by posting a photo of by largest tomato so far this year. I hope to improve on this as I still have a possible new PB growing. This one was grown off my 5.05 Watson seed from a few years ago.

The wait is over! The Giant Vegetable Growers of Ontario are excited to present our 11 participating teams for the annual Mike DeMars Memorial Tomato Contest.