Also - I keep forgetting, how long do seeds last? I have some from 2004.

TELL me about it. And after that beautiful day yesterday, it's been snowing all day here.

My schedule is (for indoor starts):

March 8 - Lavender and Chives
March 21 - Tomatoes and Marigolds
April 18 - Watermelon (my daughter's request)

The chives and marigolds are for smell bug protection around the tomatoes. I've never grown watermelon before so I don't know how that will go.

I have found pumpkin to be very fussy about being transplanted - the connection between the stem and the roots seems so floppy, at least the sugar pumpkins we had last year. They were tremendous self-sowers, so we left them out last fall where we wanted them to grow and we'll see what happens.

Mother's Day is the 10th this year but I am targeting Saturday May 16th as Big Planting Day (though I do expect to have a couple weeks of having to occasionally cover them on frost nights). I hope my seedlings are successful enough for me to have things to plant! All I want for Mother's Day is to be able to dig compost, manure and peat into my beds all day long.

Were your 2004 seeds stored in cool and dry conditions since then?

Watermelons need a lot of room, they sprawl all over the ground. I didn't even have a flower from my watermelon. Bad spot. 3 hours of sun. Needs a lot of hot weather.

The 2004 seeds were stored in a cool dry place.

I've never grown watermelon, but I grew cantaloupe/muskmelon last year and that should be close enough. The plant was absolutely infested with aphids. I know that I'm supposed to spray the bottoms of the leaves with a soapy water mixture, but that's impossible to do every day when the plant covers the ground 10x4 feet in BOTH directions. I believe the problem was more ants than aphids, but they were also impossible to control. However, I was able to pull off about four cantaloupe off the plant though before my attempts to kill the aphids weakened the plant too much to allow any more fruit to ripen.

So, give yourself plenty of room. Even if you only plant a single plant, it should turn itself into a watermelon patch. Make sure you get the bugs under control early.

Of course, that was just my experience with melons. Your mileage may vary.

My variety of watermelon is Sugar Bush Baby, or some such - it's supposed to be a compact-ish plant and yield watermelons only the size of cantaloupe. This was completely my daughter's choice - if it were up to me, all of my veg garden would be tomatoes. I'm hoping for two healthy watermelon plants to plant outside and hoping that one survives the transplant.

I will now know to watch out for bugs, and I'll try to find a place that isn't near my precious tomatoes too!