I guess you traded weeds for access.
I’m saying this after I just came in from pulling fistfuls of weeds from mine.
My easiest melons are the ones I’ve planted at the base of my 3 foot landscape circles for some fruit trees. The vines run on top of crushed limestone walkway areas and are a breeze to handle.
I planted a couple in the ground in my greenhouse and it’s similar gravel between trees that makes it easy to redirect any vines that stray underfoot. Still only male flowers on both of them, though… I’m hoping for female ones soon! Here’s one of them, with a volunteer cantaloupe in the background (I grew Minnesota Midget in there last year and must have dropped some seeds when eating one):
I have some nice limestone and gravel landscaped areas that I have some fruit trees planted in. Little weeding issues and they seem to be growing fine.
My Uzbek melons “торпедо” are running nicely, haven’t shown much damage despite sink bugs being pretty bad for me this year (praise the sunflower trap crop!) and have started putting out female flowers.
We’ll see how long they take to develop and ripen… It’s a pretty big melon so I’m expecting to have to wait a while.
Does this look fully pollinated and viable. Variety is Nancy.
Don’t worry I pulled the tendril off of the stem after taking the picture. Funny thing is I was so excited by the little melon I didn’t notice the tendril until after looking at the picture.
It’s hard to say. On my variety, Starbrite, I’d say no. On another variety maybe.
Is this a long melon at maturity or a bit more blocky?
A friend gave me the seeds and I can only find two sellers and very little other information, Southern Exposure and Adaptive seeds. Adaptive has the best photo, which looks pretty long, so perhaps there’s hope.
I’m guessing I might need to reduce the number of vines as well since I started 5 in a hill, all came up and they’ve only got about 80sqft to roam in.
It’s a little early to tell. In a week or two it will be more obvious. The bloom end needs to fill out. If that end stays small and feels soft then it won’t amount to much.
I am 2 hours south of you in VA. I have one plant of Nancy growing from SESE. First time trying that variety. It’s just starting to vine as it was in the bunch of seeds I planted later than I intended to. I bought a bunch of watermelon seed form SESE in 2020 and most I didn’t plant until this year. It seems to be very vigorous compared to others so I have high hopes for it so far. If it was named Scarlet Bliss I might would have planted it before this year. lol
Yup, I almost didn’t plant it since I’ve had poor luck with watermelons so far. But when I read the descriptions that said this was the one watermelon farmers grew for their own families, I decided to give it a shot. It supposedly has a thing rind so doesn’t ship well, but hopefully that doesn’t translate into splitting, easy access by critters, etc.
Please let me know how yours does.
So how is that plant looking now? What size are your Ledmons now?
My Nancy water melon seems big enough to believe it is on its way.
Several other small ones may be coming along soon
The vines are already pushing the bounds of their space. There are five so maybe I’ll remove two or three when I can see good fruit set, culling the ones that are last to set.
I’ve got 4 blacktail mountain melons. Two are bowling ball sized but not starting to ripen yet (no white mark on the bottom yet).
The package says 8-12 lbs. They look about that.
Well, I have a problem. My Ledmon seed from 2017 are not Ledmon. I planted some known Ledmon seed from last year in an effort to produce some pure Ledmon seed. They won’t mature until very late this fall. Meantime, the watermelons I have currently maturing are too dark colored which suggests they may be Wibb.
Unfortunately, I sent the 2017 seed to one or two people here on Growing Fruit. If you received Ledmon seed from me this year, please note that it is not Ledmon. It should still be a very good watermelon so don’t be too disappointed.
This is the first time I’ve had a seed mix-up. I’ve had problems with cross pollination, but not with mis-labeling a pack of seed.
That’s a bummer. Will you have enough late pure seed to share for next year?
I have enough 2022 seed to share with a few people. Will have to wait and see what the late plants do. I was avoiding sending out the 2022 seed because it was not very good quality for germination. Most of the seed I planted germinated so it will be good enough for now.
How come Ledmon didn’t catch on with the sellers of heirloom watermelon seeds? It certainly has had more press than most of the old ones and you can still find it at farmer’s markets near its place of origin in Greensboro, NC. A deep dive into Google searching turned up one of the many sustainable home gardening You Tubers growing it for her family.
I have a nice patch of Charleston Gray coming on.
@Fusion_power … i planted 24 seeds of those varieties you sent me… 1 seed sprouted and is growing In with my CG pafch. Perhaps those seeds were a little too old ? Noticed some were from 2016 2017. I tried them but only 1 of 24 germinated.
I am sure they will look different… may have to get you to id it once i see fruit set. Right now all i can find are CG fruit.
First Big Stripe of the season. Notice the almost total absence of seeds. You get ALL melon. This one was starting to sunburn, so I decided to pick a little early, but it is still sweet and crunchy. I grow this variety every year, and it never lets me down. Although it’s a crimson sweet variety, it’s MUCH better,
