They branch naturally. If possible you need to leave them alone until they set fruit. New flowers appear only on new growth. So if you want more fruit they need to be growing. You can prune after they set but don’t remove too much or you’ll affect melon size and possibly sweetness.
In a greenhouse you may have to pollinate by hand. If the greenhouse has roll up sides the bees might find there way in but probably not until there is a lot of bloom and that only happens with a big plant. You’d be wise to hand pollinate the early flowers. Don’t expect that to be easy. I ave 5-10% set via hand pollination, pollinate 10 females under ideal conditions and maybe 1 will set.
I plan to remove the highest layer of glas panel over the full length of the greenhouse as soon as the plants flower. At the sides there are 3 layer of glas panels on top of each other. I hope opening the upper glas panels at the sides suffices. The sides of my greenhouse are roughly 1.8 metres high.
Beautiful fruit, I just put my plants in the ground with plastic mulch and I put some wire netting down, as I think you suggested, to keep the wind from whipping the vines around. I am glad I did, we had a day of incredible wind right after they were planted but they stayed put.
Just chiming in with my .02, hope I’m not out of place. Only planted a few vines this year, and we had a nice drought going on for the first month or so. Watering was very controllable, and was just waiting for flowers to appear. The minute female blossoms started showing up, it began raining almost every morning, so have had a hard time getting them pollinated Have been doing the best I can by hand. The bees are really working over the cucumbers, hitting every flower many times, but they pass over the watermelons :-/ Guess compared to the hundreds of cuke flowers the watermelons don’t look very appetizing. Super humid here too, so not easy hand pollinating, seems the pollen just clumps, but some has to be getting in there. Only 2 fruit set on 5 plants. Hope it’s a long season.
It’s not easier in our dry climate. I’m lucky to get 5% set when hand pollinating watermelon. And that only seems to happen on warm, still, humid mornings just after the flowers open. Later in the day I can’t seem to pick up any pollen. Maybe I need a different pollination tool. Right now it’s a small artist brush.
Agree, the blossoms only seem to have a viability window of an hour or two in the early morning. If your only getting 5% I don’t feel too bad. Using the same kind of brush as you I think…small soft brush, the kind I used to paint plastic model cars with when I was a kid. Was also trying a little different method with the humidity -since the pollen was sticking so severely to the brush, and not seeming to brush off easily, I’d load the brush and hold it right over the female blossom and give it a “flick” to try and knock some of the pollen off the brush and just let it fall on to the blossom. Also tried rubbing 2 brushes with pollen over the blossom to let it fall in. There are ants in there, and was thinking maybe they’d distribute it. Am I getting to far into the weeds with this?
.Just so you guys know…I’m following your posts with great envy! I just can’t believe how far ahead of me you guys are! I’m sure its in large part because you are both further south, but also because I planted seeds and not plants, and did so the 2ed week of May or there abouts.
But the other reason you are so far ahead is that I’ve had major problems with germination this year, and I’m posting this in large part to ask if anyone else in my part of the country (KY/TN border) has had germination problems. In 30 years of growing watermelons, I have never had anywhere CLOSE to the low germination rates I’ve had this year. Believe it or not, I got less than 40% germination on my first planting. That means almost 2/3 of my seeds didn’t come up!!! I usually get 90% germination rates or even slightly better.
I don’t think it is my seeds, because I had seeds from different sources that all had horrible germination rates! This year, soon after I planted all my seeds we had a very unusual, extended cold spell and huge amounts of rain. SO my seeds laid there in very cold and very wet soil for the first 10 days. We all know that can be the perfect storm of seed failures, and I’ve proven it to be true!!! I replanted and even round 2 had far more failures than usual. I really can’t explain what went wrong other than to say something did. I’ve long told people to just plant seeds for simplicity because most years if I plant a seed and a 3-5 inch plant at the same time, they usually ripen fruit at the same time.
The good news is after 3 rounds of replanting, I’ve finally got a good stand of melon plants, but I’ll be picking watermelons when everyone else is picking apples and pumpkis! ha. Glad you guys above are doing well. Anyone else have sprouting problems this year? Thanks.
I just wiggle my pollen laden brush all over the head of that female flower. Trying to get as much in there as possible and cover everything many times. A heavy coat on the brush does about two females and then I get more. Usually visit each flower 2-3 times. Sometimes I think 10-20% but I know that’s the exception.[quote=“thecityman, post:469, topic:6222”]
I planted seeds and not plants, and did so the 2ed week of May or there abouts.
[/quote]
My May planting is just running on the most advanced varieties. Some are just a few leaves. The March planting is about to start harvest. Planting date is huge. We’ve only had a few nights warmer than 60F. I’m cooler than Rayrose but warmer than you. My advantage is more sun and black weed barrier.
I looked up actual climatic averages. Columbia SC is 5F warmer than Alpine TX for March thru May so that’s two weeks earlier warming up. Alpine is 3F warmer than Nashville. So we are about two weeks earlier than northern TN.
On my nitrogen poor soil I push fertilizer from planting until late summer. A little about every two weeks. The plants have to keep growing to keep setting fruit. Best nitrogen is not to much or too little. Go by vigor of the plants.
On good soil they may not need any after planting. Too much nitrogen and too much water, like most fruits, can lower sweetness.
My limited experience with zinnias tells me a makeup brush is superior to a paint brush. I don’t know why, but I am guessing it’s designed for powder over creams
Have had a terrible time with zucchini and cukes germination this year. I have replanted twice. We’ve had wild temperature swings and very irregular rainfall. The two watermelon seeds I planted are both doing great, though!
I bought all new seeds this year and have had very good germination.
Only had to replant once on certain spots. The quality of the seeds and
the particular variety has a lot to do with germination, along with soil temps.
That’s why I always plant late. I also use black plastic, but mainly for weed
control. OG and Big Stripe were my fastest germinators, with Gold Strike
and cantalopes being a little slower.
The few times I’ve hand pollinated, I just pick a male flower and rub it onto
the female flower and have yet to not get a match. Forget the brush.
The primary cause of failure to germinate seedless watermelons is rewetting the seeds before emergence. They need evenly moist not wet soil. I doubt your soil was all that cold in May but it sounds like it was wet. Did you get rain soon after planting?
That includes many yrs of planting seedless watermelons outdoors in March when our average air temperature is 54F. Warm and evenly moist soil is the key. I never water after the initial watering at planting until after the plants have emerged. If it works for seedless, normal melons are a breeze.
Found a bumblebee nest today 20 ft. from my newly planted melons, convenient Never seen one before, they picked a pile of oak leaves I was still getting around to using as mulch, heard loud buzzing and then about 30 came boiling out when I pulled a weed. They don’t seem aggressive though. Guess I should stick a big terra cotta pot over the nest…
Yes, I should have mentioned that I did have rain right after planting…tons of it. I felt like that was my problem this year…the seeds were practically under water (meaning the soil was completely saturated for many days after planting). You may be right about my soil not being too cool, but it was unseasonably cool for almost 2 weeks after I planted. I guess I was just searching for anything that was different this year. As I said, for 30 years I’ve always found watermelons to be one of the best seeds for germinating (2ed only to beans I think) so it was very strange to have so many fail this year when I didn’t do anything different from all my past years. But I don’t want to give anyone new the idea that you need to use plants instead of seeds to grow watermelons. Just like most people on this thread have said, I normally would argue that planting seeds is a perfectly fine way to grow watermelons. Of course there is nothing wrong with plants, but they are a lot of work and I usually don’t feel like they give you the head start that you would expect- but that’s just my own experience and I know others feel starting seeds indoors is a big advantage.
I dd appreciate you telling me that you had good germination with your March planting when it was avg of 54 degrees. Thats about what it was here during what I called a “cold spell” so it probably had more to do with water than temp- just as you said yourself. I also saw 2 of my plants yesterday that had just come up and had much of their first leaves eaten off by something. So it is possible that birds or bugs or something was eating my plants as soon as they popped up. But again, it seems strange that I’ve never had that problem in a lifetime of growing watermelons and 6 years at this location. Oh well…I’ve taken enough of everyone time on my germination problem. I’ve replanted and though I’ll have a very late harvest, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of good melons. Thanks all.
I don’t want to give anyone the idea that an average temperature of 54F is good or adequate for melon emergence. It’s not. I took measures as indicated in the thread I started.to increase soil temperature dramatically. 54F ave is a low of 38 and a high of 70, that’s not melon weather. But it gives folks in short season areas that want to grow melons an idea of what’s possible.
According to your posting above you finished your first planting May 20. The period since then in Nashville has only seen three nights with a low below 60F with highs in the 80s. That’s no where near an average of 54, more in the range of 70+.
Have been doing the best I can by hand. The bees are really working over the cucumbers, hitting every flower many times, but they pass over the watermelons :-/ Guess compared to the hundreds of cuke flowers the watermelons don’t look very appetizing. Super humid here too, so not easy hand pollinating, seems the pollen just clumps, but some has to be getting in there. Only 2 fruit set on 5 plants. Hope it’s a long season.