Watermelon Growing

FN, where are you getting your weed fabric?

Shaw Fabric products in Colorado and the Greenhouse Mega Store.

These are some pics of my two melon patches.


In the foreground is a patch of Big Stripe. Thereā€™s a pathway in front of the
peach tree and behind it are canteloupes on he left and Orangegloā€™s and Gold
Strikes to the right.

Big Stripe Patch.

In the front are cantalpoupes planted in rows from left to right. Behind the
cantaloupes are alternating rows of Gold Strike and Orangegloā€¦ Thereā€™s a brick border around both beds.

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Great looking patch Ray!

Thanks FN!

Just as beautiful as I expected it to be, Ray! Your patch is exactly the thick mass of vines I was saying mine would eventually be, but your patch is a painful reminder of how late I really am this yearā€¦and I hate that. But based on @Chikn 's ā€œpoemā€ I probably did the right thing by not planting in the mud, which would have been almost impossible anyway. Again, Ray, that is just a picture perfect patch of watermelons and Iā€™m sure youā€™ll have a bountiful harvest!

@Chikn - yes, I have free range chickens. Did you really think I didnā€™t know how wild they are about watermelons! ha. On MORE THAN ONE OCCASION (which tells something about my learning curve) I have cut a watermelon on the picnic table and gone inside to get salt or a drink or whatever, only to return and find 10 chickens going ape-S##t crazy on my melon. And the one thing that keeps me from feeling too guilty about just eating the heart out of my watermelons and tossing the rest of it aside is the fact that I know the rest will (and always is) be eaten completely- seeds and all- by my chickens. Its also fun at the end of the year when Iā€™ve picked, eaten, or given away all I can and the patch still contains all the deformed melons and the ones that didnā€™t size up well or had bad spots, I will walk around and either stomp them open or pick them up and throw them down to break them open. For the next few days my chickens are like pigs in mud. Its the only time of the year I see my chickens not roost until after dark. And you can literally see their bellies (which as you know are sort of in their lower throat area) bulged out like the swallowed a ballon. Yes, watermelons bring as much joy to my chickens as they do to me!

@fruitnut Iā€™d love to use fabric for weed barier, but it would get pretty expensive to cover about 1/2 of acre with it, especially when I get zero income from my melons. I also thought it might reduce the water that gets to them? Anyway, I understand why youā€™d want to reduce the weeding effort. Itā€™s a big part of my effort in the garden!

Oh my gosh, that is really lovely, Ray! Do you have much issue with critters? If so, how do you manage them? Just beautiful!!

Thanks everyone. I have very little critter problems. The main ones are
rabbits, when the plants are young, but I dispose of them with an air
rifle. I rarely have any other problems, except ants. One year, I did have
a raccoon take an entire melon and roll it around the house and into the
front yard, approximately 75 ft., before he finally gave up. He surely had
to exhaust himself.
This yearā€™s main problem has been a severe drought, accompanied by daily 100 degree weather for almost a month. If I had not had an irrigation system, the pictures would show a lot of dead vines on top of a sea of black plastic. For the past week, Iā€™ve been harvesting about a half dozen
cantaloupes every day. The watermelons are going to be a little late this year.

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I didnā€™t know the drought in SC had moved that far east

Ray nice looking melon patch!! But whatā€™s this ā€œIā€™m out of room thingā€? I see all sorts of open spacesā€¦!!

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I used to grow a watermelon patch but too tired to deal with weeding. Now I have to rely on Walmart or Costco watermelons. They are good and real cheap at prime season. It was on sale for $1.79 a piece and weight in around 30 lbs.

Tony

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Odd how a short distance makes a big difference. This is our best year ever on corn after having our worst year last year. With our poor sandy soil we need 1" of rain a week and we have gotten that and more. We are cutting almost 200 bushel corn right now, which is unreal for us. Last year averaged about 35 but we stopped altogether when we hit 7 bushels on our last two fields. I have not had to water much at all in the garden this year.

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Youā€™re a funny man. Thatā€™s where the figs are going.

My last water bill was like a car payment.

[quote=ā€œc5tiger, post:193, topic:6222ā€]
We are cutting almost 200 bushel corn right now, which is unreal for us. Last year averaged about 35 [/quote]

Wow, that is amazing on poor sandy soilā€¦!! Nice work.

Hahaha! At least you have the city rates. I get to pay something like an extra 50% for being outside of city limits.

Ray, didnā€™t you recently say that youā€™d finally been getting a lot of rain lately, watering down the taste of some harvests? Almost every day storms form around me, but just give us the electrical activity as the rain heads toward the city in your direction. Weā€™ve gotten a few sprinkles from the edges, but that doesnā€™t even wet the ground beneath the grass or trees. This year has been very much like last year for me, except that last year I did get one good rain at the beginning of each month. Thatā€™s not happening this time around.

@c5tiger Mark, Iā€™m glad youā€™re getting the rain you need this year. After an entire year of disastrous growing weather for you guys last year, you both need and deserve a bumper year.

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I only got rain this past weekend and a lot of it. It was the only decent
rain Iā€™ve had since April. Those clouds you see pass by me and head
down town.

Itā€™s good for the farm, bad for my fruit. My apples and pomegranates have all rotted even with spraying and the figs are fermenting on the tree. You can smell the figs from far away and see the bubbles coming out of the eyes. They taste awful but this guy seems to like them.

Anyone grow Kajari melon. Mine taste ok but the texture is very soft and mushy is this normal?

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Same hereā€¦i can buy them so cheap that with my limited space/time iā€™ll get by with store bought.

I picked a Cream of Saskatchewan today, which seems very early for any watermelon in NE Ohio. Itā€™s been nice and hot this year with just enough rain, and I had my raised beds mulched pretty heavily with shredded wood chips. I tried growing it up a trellis but that didnā€™t work as well as Iā€™d hoped. It was soccer ball sized and pretty good. Iā€™ve never had that variety before. Iā€™d give it a 9 for crispiness and juiciness, and maybe a 7.5 for flavor.

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