Deployed airman grows desert crop

5/21/2003 - OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (AFPN)  -- One look around this forward-deployed location shows most people there is nothing green to be had in the country.

It is said that when airmen here return home, everything with color will be infinitely more brilliant. Grass will be much greener, and flowers will be far more colorful and vibrant.

Senior Airman Dusty Bailey did not want to wait that long. He saw that even in the vast desert, there is potential for real plant life, and he isnt letting climate stand in his way.

Bailey, assigned to the 379th Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory, and is from a small town in northern Florida filled with watermelon farms.

He started doing some research and discovered that watermelons were first grown in Africas Kalahari Desert. He figured if they could grow there, why not in the desert of Southwest Asia.

Armed with a handful of power tools, and a junkyard full of scrap wood, he set out to build the box that would hold the melons. Once finished, the box was pushed, pulled, poked and prodded into position atop a hardened-shelter roof and filled with sand, potting soil and eventually some watermelon sprouts.

Seeds were allowed to gestate in some half-liter water bottles full of sand for two weeks. Out of the sand in the bottles grew several little shoots. The fledgling watermelons had indeed sprouted into several tiny little plants.

When they were ready Bailey carefully planted them into the sand in the box.

There they have flourished for two months. They are tall and strong. Fed by reconstituted water from an air conditioner and leftover water bottles, they are growing at a fantastic rate.

Bailey estimates the first crop of melons will be ready by mid-July.

Even if we don't get a watermelon for this rotation, there will be some for a future rotation, said Bailey. That's my legacy.