Spidermite? Shouldn’t kill a little fruit though, or at least you would need more of them.
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I’m real far behind all of you but blacktail has a melon starting
they’re all vining out and fighting for their lives in there. midget melon have female flowers also finally
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2 weeks ago I pulled a fist sized melon because it was rotting where all the little red dots were consolidated. Just don’t want that to happen with all the new ones. It’s weird, it’s just the galia (more specifics on type unknown as seeds came from a delicious grocery one). They’re on a trellis with some cantaloupe varieties and another honeydew-type and those don’t get them.
@resonanteye my large watermelons are only about a week ahead of your baby! Direct sow for the extra slow…
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It’s a bit of a tangled mess, but I think the left is Orange Crisp F1 seedless and the other is Yarilo (sp?).
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i got 2 orangeglo about the size of a basketball off 1 vine last summer but i started them in late may indoors. put out in mid june. have 2 vines going now with blooms. hopefully get another 4 . they were way more tasty than store bought but wether they were fully ripe, i wouldnt have anything to compare to. they were bright orange inside. there’s a guy on here from z3 M.N that grows huge watermelons. he must grow them indoors for months before putting them out. they love manure to the point where i had them and my squash growing in pure goat bedding with about 4in. of good soil on top, in my raised bed. got 27 Georgia candy roasters from 1 vine in that same raised bed.
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I’m learning about growing seedless and that Johnnys has them. Have you had any major issues germinating and growing them? Do you use whatever pollenizer seed they send or just any other normal seeded variety? Kids growing up with seedless as the standard are super finicky seeds!
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Johnny’s sent a packet of “Ace” watermelon as a pollinizer. It looks like it produces lots of flowers and very small watermelons that wouldn’t be hard to differentiate from Orange Crisp. I didn’t start any of those because I already had several plants in ground and flowering when I ordered the Orange Crisp seeds. They just need pollen from a regular seeded watermelon, and there’s enough of those available that the bees should be able to handle the rest.
I’ve been starting my seeds in an ~80-85F room upstairs this year. A bit warmer would probably be ideal, but it worked. The seedless plants were a bit slower/wimpier in getting started compared to all but one of the others (which is supposed to be a dwarf plant, I think. I imported a bunch of seeds from Ukraine, the literature isn’t great.) I planted three seeds in a 3" pot, all three came up, two grew well enough to get planted out. The third was tiny and not doing much.
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The description of the seedless include how many melons per plant and it seems 1-3 is the theme. That seems really low, but it’s only my third year growing watermelon. Is that normal? Or are they just less productive than seeded?
In case anyone else has the red dot/likely spider mite issue- neem spray helped in that before spray, I really couldn’t get them off without scratching the melon, day after spray they brush off. One that I missed had liquid coming out where they were accumulated. Not fan of spraying neem amidst flowers, but, I try to do it late evening so fewer bees are out. I will forever be amazed how quickly pests come from nowhere and find something to feed on.
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“Taiwan melon” I started from a store bought fruit.
Still smells super grassy/cucurbitty. Not sure how to tell when they’re ripe, but the tentacle wasn’t browned either.
My first cantaloupe… a “Hannah’s Choice F1” from Johnny’s.
It needs a few days.
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Egusi Melon. I only have 1 vine, but I probably have close to 5 fruits growing that are about this size and a bunch more starting out. I don’t like watermelons very much, so the point of these is to get the seeds for baking and soups.
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Very sad. I’m sorry! I put everything exposed that I care about under chicken wire cages this year. SO sick of that happening. We’ll see how it works as we get to September and the feeding pressure ramps up. I’ll post a picture of some watermelons in them tomorrow.
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Cages. I have to make the watermelons (like this) bigger this weekend. This is an Orange tendersweet. First year growing them and I’m impressed as it’s the most productive vine of the varieties I have going. The others are far behind just starting to flower.
My pumpkin/large watermelon patch is in the last bit of grass in my unprotected front yard. I also spray deer and rabbit spray when it’s dry. Anyone else notice the 2025 Deer and Rabbit spray is missing the strong manure smell of the previous years? Now, it just smells like garlic and thyme (which are some of the ingredients).
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I bought a cantaloupe and a watermelon plant at the Amish nursery this spring. I left them in their little cell packs in the back of the gator for several days and forgot to water them. The little watermelon shriveled and died and the little cantaloupe plant was almost dead. I watered it and it revived but looked terrible. To make matters worse, it stayed in that little cell pack several more weeks until I finally got soil in my new raised beds.
I stuck the little thing in one of the new beds in early June and told my husband I had little hope that it would do much, since I think melons do better when direct-seeded and not root-cramped in a tiny pot.
That cantaloupe plant has stunned me and grew so fast and so big I had to jump out of the way. It has already put on 5 good size melons. Sadly, I lost the tag with the variety on it and can’t remember the name. If the melons taste good, I will be saving seed from that baby because it is a survivor and productive. Below are some photos:
3 melons from that cantaloupe on the ground
2 melons from that cantaloupe up in the raised bed
The vines in the back middle raised bed and almost all the vines on the ground are from that one little cantaloupe plant.
I sure hope it is tasty! Next spring I will try to go to the Amish nursery and see if we can figure out the variety name.
Sandra
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I’m harvesting 1 or 2 Yellow Moon & Stars watermelons daily. Have one in the refrigerator and another on the counter which will be given to a friend. About 20 or 30 more are on the vines still growing.
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Hey y’all. I see some amazing melons in this thread. This is my third season growing melons. I grow them in large wooden containers.
The first season was a big fail. I saved seeds from Uzbek melons we purchased here at a local Uzbek store, Torpeda (Mirza), and I believe one called Kizil Kovun. All melons got hit by very cold weather at the end of May and got sick with some kind of disease. Looked like anthracnose to me.
The second season, last year, I grew Korean Torpedo melons, which grew and ripened well, but were tiny, crunchy, and not very sweet. I want something big, soft, very fragrant, very sweet, and very juicy. Yes, Uzbek Torpeda melon comes to mind, which was the best melon I’d ever tasted.
Encouraged by the results last year, I am trying my hand at Uzbek melons again. I know, they are very temperamental outside of Uzbekistan, and Canada is not an ideal place to grow them by far, but hey, there is no harm in trying, right?
This year I am growing two Torpeda/Mirza melons and one Kizil Kovun. I am also trying one Spanish variety called Tendral, but, sadly, it doesn’t look like Tendral to me. So far, so good. I lost one Kizil Kovun melon of good size due to my own mistake, but the rest look fine, and the weather up here has been good. Hope at least a couple ripen well and we get to taste them.
My Torpeda melon:
I wanted to post more pics, but they only allowed me one on account of being a new user. Oh well. Maybe later.
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That’s awesome, I really hope it ripens for you!
Canada might not be too bad a place to try. They grow them in the drier parts of southern Russia and Ukraine. I don’t know if those are as good as the ones grown in Uzbekistan, but still, an ok torpeda is still an incredible melon.
Best of luck! Glad to see more people trying and another seed source on this side of the Atlantic.
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