Hi Thomas, thanks for all that inspiring information and I hope your travels are going well.
Here’s my addition to the map. We aren’t that different though I do get notably less water and my season is a bit shorter. https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/43746~50735/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Nontron-and-Villerest#Figures-Temperature
I’m very curious to follow up on your whole watermelon sowing experiment, but for now I don’t have any to try that as well. I’m in my second year of experimenting watermelon, so I have new varieties to add that I’ve sown on April 8th in pots in my little greenhouse. My plan is to do a batch of direct seeding as well this year with a mix of grexes I’ve gotten from the community and my grex from 2025.
For more details info on my watermelon project, see my post here: Watermelon landrace project in France - Loire region
Looking forward to following along with you guys!