Watermelon Growing

All of my crimson sweet are splitting open before they are fully ripe. Is that a tendency of that variety? One of my baby flower split unripe, but none of my Ali baba and orangeglo have split.

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Iā€™m curious about those of you who are grafting watermelonsā€¦canā€™t help but wonder why. In no way am I suggesting its not a good thing to do, I just am curious. Iā€™ve never had any problems with growing watermelons on their own root stock from seed. Also, I have a LOT more problems with squash bugs drilling into and killing squash and pumpkins, which some of you mentioned you are using, than I have with watermelons. I also get more powdery mildew on those than watermelons. So if anything it seems like a melon grafted onto those kind of things would be more problematic, not less. Anyway, Iā€™d love to hear why you guys are doing that.

@northof53 Bob is getting nice and fat! :slight_smile: Your cat looks like he might like bobā€¦better keep an eye out!

@TheNiceGuy - Honestly, I wouldnā€™t worry much at all about pollinating your male or female flowers, especially if they our outside, unless you are growing them specifically for seeds and want to be sure they are pure (or you are trying to intentionally cross something). But if you are just growing watermelons for fun and to get something good to eat, donā€™t worry about pollinating! Bugs will do it just fine. Iā€™ve been growing watermelons all my life with pretty darm good results and Iā€™ve never hand pollinated a single flower. Even if you only have one plant, you should have no problem getting watermelons if you have good healthy vines that bloom. Good luck.

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Iā€™d also like to hear this grafting story, and exactly the grafting details.

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Fusarium wiltā€¦ Mine are on Field Trip, its a bulletproof variety that doesnā€™t have problems. And bottle gourds which are also disease resistant.

I read about grafting them here. Can't grow watermelon but can grow pumpkins?

I did approach grafts and it was pretty easy, timing germination of the melons and stock was the hard partā€¦ Pumpkins are really fast and gourds take forever.

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I too read the thread hoosierbanana posted and I got to thinking this may be for me. I agree with her that timing is important. As well I would say that the pumpkin stem is huge compared to the watermelon, so a light touch is needed when inserting the cuts together.

I have tried watermelon before, and I have a greenhouse that is warm from mid March till the end of Nov. and still I could not get watermelon fruit. I am not sure if it is the soil, the temps. or the amount of transplanting needed for potting up, but my grafted, I have 6, have surpassed the 6 non grafted by a mile.

I did the approach graft as the video suggested at the two leaf stage, I used teflon tape instead of tinfoil because I found that if the tinfoil was left on longer then the stem, as it grew, was actually cut by the edge. I cut the pumpkin leaves off at the prescribed time of 5 days, and the roots at varying times. I did 7, 10, 12, and 14 days, the 12 and 14 day ones seemed to have a better take. Many watermelon and pumpkin seedlings gave unselfishly of their lives to my blundering attempts while trying to learn what worked :blush:

For sure, if you can already grow watermelon or other melons, there is no need for all this fuss. I donā€™t have squash bugs, and as for powdery mildew no problems yet.

All in all this was actually quite a fun project, grafting was finickity as the stems are incredibly small and tender and slicing clean thru happened a lot. But it is something to consider for those of us in colder zones. I will repeat it next year, one year of 12 plants is not large enough to say that this would always work.

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More pics! From my back yard and from my farm boxes. The ones at my Urban Farm were blooming like crazy today! The nets over the ones in my back yard keep the squirels from digging them up before they get going. Yes they actually do that. I started a Canary melon yesterday called Tweetie. Hope it does well. Hope yaā€™ll like the pics!

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Your urban farm boxes look GREAT. Hopefully you know the ones in the foreground arenā€™t watermelons- they look like some kind of cantaloupe/musk melon to me. What are they?: Looks like the ones behind them in the same row are watermelons. Good luck!

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You really are a pro arenā€™t you! Correct you are. That is Haleā€™s best and Super 45 cantaloupe in the first boxes. The watermelons are more sorbet. Canaries in the ones behind them. They were just planted Saturday though. That building in the background is the coliseum at Fair Park. It was the former home of the National Finals Rodeo!

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Iā€™d like to say Iā€™m a pro, but lets be honestā€¦not too hard to recognize cantaloupes and watermelons once youā€™ve seen them! Iā€™ve heard a lot of good things about Super 45, and youā€™re sure look good. Iā€™ve had pretty good luck with Hales Best myself. They are very common around here. Who owns the property beside the coliseum where your boxes are? Does the city/county provide it?

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Kevin,
Finally had a chance to take a pic. My indoir seedlings died so I had to sow seeds directly in soil. Late sowing. Blacktail Mountain and Orangeglo.

They may not amount to anything but it is a good learning experience.

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I have read about how to pick a ripe watermelon, but it wasnā€™t clear about the stem. Should it be dried and brown while still on the vine?
Also, how do you know when itā€™s become too ripe on the vine?

Itā€™s not the stem but the adjoining tendril that turns brown. Once that turns brown the melon is ripe or past ripe. Past ripe becomes evident after cutting the melon open. It starts getting mealy and the flesh breaks down first right around the seeds.

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OK, that makes it clearer, thanks Fruitnut.
I just took this picture tonight. Only been one on there for the last couple weeks:

I experimented with cardboard in leu of landscape fabric, and it seems to work well:

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Thanks to all you folks taking about watermelons I took the plunge and planted black diamond, moon and stars, and crimson sweet. Theyā€™ve all got fruit in the baseball to softball size.

Moon and Stars

Crimson Sweet

Theyā€™re in my community garden plot and there is still a long way to go and a lot of time left to loose them to raccoons, rats or 2 legged thieves.

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Yes sir it is on city property that my Farm sits. It is totally unused except during the Fair. In a month or so we have to move all the boxes around with a forklift and trailers when we start getting ready for the Fair. That area is home to a giant shopping pavilion tent during the Fair itself! Big job!

Drew

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Since this is my first season growing WM, here is my report so far:

I planted 3 varities Janosik, Sweet Siberian, Blacktail Mountain. Since my plan is to save some seeds for next season I planted every variety at a different site to avoid cross pollination. Janosik and Sweet Siberian got planted in different greenhouses. Blacktail Mountain I planted outdoors cause of those varieties it is said to be the fastest to ripen.

I started the seeds indoor and got 100% germination, 3 plants each.

Janosik in my greenhouse is growing very well I think. The only problem is pollination. Iā€™m doing it by hand as fruitnut suggested. Though I try to dust every female flower very thoroughly with pollen, until now I only got 3 melons. Iā€™d estimate them to be 20% of the female flowers. There now are some more flowers I already pollinated or tried to. Maybe I got some more sets but I doubt it, we will see. The fruits that developed are doing fine. Here are some pictures (sorry for suboptimal quality)

The Sweet Siberian plants are growing in my fathers greenhouse. One was lost to snails. The survivors are growing well too. But he even has more trouble to get them to set. He is trying hard as he says but got no melon until now. At the weekend I was on a visit and tried to handpollinate 4 flowers.

The Blacktail Mountain melons I planted in my fruit orchard. I made a hill for every plant and even put down black landscape fabric. That seems to work very well. But I learned the hard way you need to put down some structure to stabilize the vines (fruitnut did suggest that too). We had some high winds and I think thats the reason I lost 2 of those plants. Their stems broke right above ground. I suspect the wind moved the vines til they broke. The remaining plant is growing well. It did set 2 melons which one day were gone without a trace. The orchard is visited only from time to time and I suspect birds or other critters attacked the unripe melons. It is still flowering and I hope for some more sets. Here is a picture of the remaining plant. I now put some stones onto the fabric to avoid the breakage of more vines.

In conclusion I really enjoy growing WM. They are fun to look at since they are so fast growing. And if I get some ripe melons, growing them will be very rewarding in that way too. On the downside I am really struggling with pollination issues. It wouldnā€™t be a big problem if only my season was longer. In normal years I can expect acceptable growing conditions until the end of September. Thats why I need the plants to set fruit until July. So its probably already too late for more melons. In a good year I can expect warm weather until mid October but thats far fetched.

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I have grown watermelons but do not feel like I know much about it. This year I planted Ali Baba, Janosik and Orange glow. Here is the hill from the plants I planted indoors. They just started to set fruits. It looks like they preferred the sunny dryway to the tomato patch.

I also planted WM seeds in the ground and they are not flowering yet. I hope they have time to ripen the fruits (when the set them) before the end of the season.

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So the one melon that set first (crimson sweet) seems like it stopped getting bigger, while another vine that melon (that set after the first one) is now outgrowing it big timeā€¦hmmmā€¦ Do melons just stop growing? The vine continues to get longer on both melonsā€¦i thought maybe the vine got damaged. I may have to cull that smaller one and just let the bigger one growā€¦

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Yes, my watermelon has also stalled out. Itā€™s not getting any bigger. Two of the other vines are getting longer, but thereā€™s no more fruit setting. Not too impressive. Last month I added a bit of time release 14 1414, but doesnā€™t seem to be doing too much. I just added some ammonia sulfate tonight to see if that helps things at all.
Last year my squash vine grew so much that it kind of became a problem. I ended up with a whole bunch of really nice looking squashes that nobody wanted to eat!

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My first Blacktail Mountain watermelon fruit that set has also stalled out, like @warmwxrules and @TheNiceGuy mentioned above, at about 4-5 lbs. Iā€™ll weigh it this weekend. The six others that are growing are putting on size still, but all of them are smaller than that first fruit.

My OrangeGlo plants are finally putting out female flowers. I probably have 3 dozen male flowers on those four plants. The first fruit that plumped up ended up shriveling. I suspect it was insufficiently pollinated. Another one of the fruit is starting to put on some size. We will see if it continues to grow, or if it suffers the fate of the first one.

I plan on fertilizing with calcium nitrate this weekend.

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