al aric

Whatever you do don't follow my example.  I won't tell you what I do, but I do own ladders and a fruit picker...

This question is like asking what my favorite song is...25 songs later I'm adding to the list..

Persimmons are up there, but Pomegranates are right on their tail...trailing close are blackberries...but wait...figs...and who can say no to Avocados?  The same people who can't also probably like harvesting apricots like I do...right after that my plums come in...oh no I'd better not start thinking about my citrus...well I think you're getting the drift.  Your question really stirs me up!

This walk through the wonders of the deep science is interesting.  I also have a love of soil science.  But remember this from hard earned experience:  Move slowly and carefully when adding to your soil.

This is a great thread and I've read the responses and they're responses that can be defended.  I used to preach crop rotation and companion planting for many years when I would give talks or assist gardeners.  Now, I'm not so sure how much I practice it.  Crop rotation, and its companion companion planting are sound advice.  They're academically entrenched in Agricultural sciences. Yet one thing I've done consistently through my gardening/farming experiences is bend the rules and more importantly, experiment.

Over the years I've found that crop rotation and companion planting don't seem to be as important as I once thought.  I used to be extremely strict.  I'd divide areas and keep track of vegetable families and segregate.  That becomes extremely difficult when growing enormous numbers of different kinds of vegetables year round.  I found myself spending many hours planning and complying with my rigid academically sound principles.  I even dedicated 1/4 of the garden on a clockwise rotation cycle to a nice cover crop.  I still do that actually.  

However there is now quite a bit of flexibility with regard to crop rotations due to something called reality.  The reality of the matter is I have so many different vegetables coming and going year round in my garden as well as my still existing cover crop that it becomes a management nightmare.  As a result of experimenting over the years with my new found flexibility on this subject I have found that the garden sky didn't fall.  In fact my gardens are as strong as ever.  So although crop rotation is a good idea and definitely something that is easy to do in a mono culture situation, it's really hard to do in a year round gardening situation.  In that situation things won't be nearly as bad as I once believed.

Hello,
I'd like to give you a hand.  Could you tell me what elevation, growing zone, and soil type you have?  I'm not an expert but I've been growing them successfully for decades.  You've mentioned a few things but I'll need the information to do what I can.  I've grown them in a sandy clay as well as clay, and soils in between.  I happen to use drip irrigation currently but flood irrigation is just as good. They seem to just want heat and water.  Varieties do matter and in a hot environment I've found that Moon and Stars is probably one of the strongest varieties I've ever had, yet there are about a dozen others that I've used and do use to intermingle in my watermelon rows.  I currently simply make rows and put them in the rows.  They seem to do very well with spacing of 5 to 10 feet.  I try not to crowd them with anything else.  I suffer terribly from all sorts of critters that believe I'm running a food kitchen for them.  Yes, animals love to eat the middle of my watermelons too.  It's warfare in the garden :).   I grew maybe 90-100 of them last year.  I make juice out of them and refrigerate it and drink it all summer.  Let's get to the bottom of the issue and get you growing watermelons!

As for specific mistakes, read this one carefully and don't do what I did:

One of my neighbors had horses and a small hill of horse manure that he volunteered to help me dump into my garden.  I did.  The following season only one type of plant would grow to the exclusion of others on the exact 1/4 portion of my 1 acre garden that we had spread the manure.   I destroyed an enormous portion of my garden because of the fact that the digestive system of horses did not destroy the herbicides that were obviously sprayed on the hay that his horses had eaten.  Beware of what you put into your garden to "help" it.  I'm sure you can imagine how much care I put into my own composting for my gardens now.

Non-specifically:

My biggest mistake was moving too quick.  When I started I simply purchased as much seed in as many different types of vegetables and associated plants, and put them in the ground and wrestled with them until I "won".  Now I have learned to slow down and get to know each variety of each plant well.  I learned to make sure that I get the exact variety for my exact location and my exact soil.  Taking the time to get to know what I'm working with and then working with it until I start to feel like I'm in a position to add to the conversation with regard to making recommendations about each variety; or not.  I can go on and on, but I'm sure you're getting a read on it.

I hope it lives, I really do.  I have one.  It's enormous.  It puts out shoots.  It grows and takes over its space.  If that was my house I would get that tree away from it as fast as I can knowing how big they get.  It's dark so I can't take a picture of mine to show you right now.  Mine is about 6' in diameter and spreading.  It will probably be 10' in diameter in a couple of years if I don't aggressively cut it back.  I'm sure you can visualize what that would do to your foundation and your home.  It might be hard to imagine that when you're wrestling with a struggling plant right now...but imagine success.  It would mean bad things for your house.

Hello there from East TX!  Where are you?  I'm not asking for the address but the general area.  As it turns out there are several people in East TX into permaculture and I'm one of them.  

I always laugh when I ask a question and questions come back.  I think to myself "answer the question"!  Here I am asking you questions.  I used to live (In the US) at a similar elevation and it provided similar challenges to composting.  I use a 3 year composting cycle, meaning from the time I start a pile to the time of use is 3 years.  Each year I start a new pile.  So I always have 3 simultaneous piles going.  I do this for a variety of reasons, one of them being I get a really good break down of the materials after 3 years.  This was especially true at a high elevation (which is your case).  I'm wondering how long your normal compost cycle is?  The dryness has me concerned.  Are you regularly monitoring your pile?  The suggestions that you have already received are good suggestions.  Moisture is so often a problem with compost.  I treat my piles like plants and I water them and monitor them intensively because if I don't they will dry out and die.  My piles are often huge (several feet in diameter) but with supervision I keep them alive.  Also at your elevation is it safe for me to assume you have snow?  Is heat generating from your piles in the winter?

Just a few thoughts and I do emphasize with your if your somewhat disappointed with my questions when you're the person asking a question but I'm trying to drill down to the possible issue.  

Happy composting!

For several years I have been using spreadsheets.  I then put out markers to confirm the spreadsheets.  When a marker becomes somehow broken, I have a spreadsheet to refer to.  Between the markers and spreadsheets I can keep track of things.  I keep details about various trees, when they bloom, when they fruit, etc.  I sometimes keep paper back ups in a binder, but they usually disappear over the years.  I know it sounds like a bit much to put everything in a spreadsheet but it has been really helpful.  I often have several different varieties of the same fruit tree and it's nice to compare the projected yield times for fruits vs.  what really happens.  I do the same thing for my vegetable gardens.  I especially enjoy keeping track of when I plant vegetables and then when I harvest them.  Different varieties have different projected days to harvest and it makes it nice to know how accurate that is in your particular area.  This is especially helpful when I plant my winter garden.  If I know when I planted in the fall and when I harvested in the spring it will help me nail down a good fall planting time.  Of course so much of this depends on weather but I find it to be helpful to take the time to use spreadsheets.