Watermelon Growing

Sorry to hear about your loss. This is ny first year growing wm and cucumber. I keep my fingers crossed.

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My second orangeglo, I am just waiting for the orange stripes on the bottom, and trying desperately to note the change in sheen.:persevere: I can’t use the dry tendril as a clue as something has broken it off.

In the colder zones, I cannot emphasize too much the importance of starting the melons early. Many sites say they cannot be transplanted, they can, they will be set back but if they are far enough along in the process setting back a week is better than planting seed directly in the garden that will never bear fruit. I would also note that I do have some vines that were transplanted that have very small fruit and have set them to late. I guess, when you are pushing the zones, more is better as failures of some will be inevitable.

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There’s a good chance they will. I have some like that also.

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Nice melon, but still has further to go.

Here is the all sweet with the yellow spots

It tasted like the all sweets without yellow spots

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@galinas
This is what happened with some of my watermelons, the leaves wilted and dried.

I am sure that this is bacterial wilt spread by cucumber beetles. This patch is in the farthest corner of the garden and I did not sprayed it. The other watermelons are sprayed with Bt and look fine. I also see a lot of wilting in cucumbers and melons, they are holding on. I do not care much about the cucumbers. But I wait for the melons to ripen.

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Did anybody tasted Janosik? I know that several members were growing it. We tried our third melon and were very disappointed again. There was very little sweetness in it. The melons looked ripe and ready. Janosik is supposed to be very sweet melon according to the description.

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That was my first thought - wilt. But I didn’t have it last year. when cucumber beetles were in numbers. This year I saw just few, very unusual. My cucumbers are in the screen house. Interesting, that one of two kinds showed the same symptoms about three week ago, I thought they going to die. But some how they just recovered after several flooding watering. I believe it was too wet in the start of summer and it damaged root system. After that, it was always reasonably cool and rained often(probably too often) and they didn’t have chance to grow bigger root system. When it started to be hot and dry – this is when they started to suffer. But I guess cucumbers had a chance to recover their roots… Watermelons are on terrace, so I can’t really flood them, and the stage they are in is much worse.

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thanks for the comment, I cannot believe the stress that comes from deciding when a watermelon is ready. LOL.

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I’ve got 5 OrangeGlo melons that look to be about the same size as yours. I hope they’ll be ready in A few weeks.

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You pick yours first LOL :grinning:and let me know if mine is ready.

ETA I am batting 0 for 1 on watermelon ripeness, and 0 for 2 on musk melon

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I just tasted my first wm ever grown by myself. It was a Janosik. I am very happy about the taste, juicyness and sweetness too. It wasn’t overwhelming sweet but I had worse wm from the stores. It was the first and smallest of only 3 wm. I am saving seeds and will grow them again next year. The rind is very thin and I like the yellow flesh too. 2.8 kg



I am hooked.

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Where did you get the seeds? My seeds came from Baker’s Creek and I know that they are not completely reliable with what they sell. My watermelons look slightly different, they are very dark green with a lot of wax and the stripes can be barely seen through. The flesh is light yellow and there is white rind visible near the skin. It is possible that mine are not fully ripe yet. But the last melon that we ate was taken about two weeks after the tendril dried out.

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Got them from www.deaflora.de, since I live in Germany. I am a total noob with growing wm. I wouldn’t realise if I got the wrong variety. But if compared to the description of janosik I believe I got the real deal.
We had a lot of cloudy and rainy weather the last weeks. That didn’t help with the sweetness for sure.
The wax is getting less with ripeness. Thats my impression looking at the fruits. And the tendril wasn’t dry at all. I figuered I had to harvest, cause of the yellowing of the bottom side and the change in appearance. It lost the wax and shine.
Here are pictures of the tendril after harvest and the remaining fruit which set 1 and 2 weeks later.


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This is the picture of my Janosik. It looks similar with less visible stripes. I’ll let them to stay longer on the vine and I’ll take a picture when we’ll open it. I have to say that my Janosiks tasted worse than the average store bought watermelon. Maybe I should wait more.

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Despite being a bit late, it showed all the signs of being ripe, so I picked it. The texture around these cracks is a bit different. But the watermelon was very good and everybody liked it.
What are these fruit fissures?

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That has the look of being over ripe. When over ripe the flesh turns mealy and pulls away from the seeds.

A melon can have a fissure even when under ripe. That’s more easily spotted when the melon is cut in two long ways.

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Very interesting. Thanks. I’ll try to keep an eye out for that.
I had meant to say above “a bit lite”, not “late”. I use iPhone dictation, and catch most of the mistakes it makes, but occasionally some get through.


This is a melon called “Fulmer.” Phil Meyer (Chikn) sent me the seeds to try out and I must say I was very impressed. When I sliced it open, I had to look twice at the rind, because it looked so much like Orangeglo. But as you can see, the rind is quite different and has the advantage of not being brittle as OG is. This melon will take rough handling and hangs on the vine a long time. so you don’t have to be constantly checking for ripeness. This is a large, long season melon (30lbs. in the picture) and is a winner in every way. For those of you that are having difficulty in growing OG, I recommend you give Fulmer a try. Phil, can you tell us how to get seeds.
Once again, kudos to Phil

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One fabulous looking melon. The color is unreal. Taste?

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