The problem is it’s such a light melon to begin with. The bottom is lighter but probably just from less sun exposure.
We MAY get an inch or two of rain the next day or so, so I’m wondering if I should pick.
Of course if it splits I’ll pull it. I’ve always heard a heavy rain before picking dilutes the sugar…true or not.
I used to follow this guy from Arizona growing melons and he said the brix is higher if you withhold water, that’s what idid, everybody said my melons were unusual sweet, they took their time savoring them.
I would check the seed catalog for how many days, then you can roughly guess. Not perfect method but better than nothing.
Hard to withhold the rain…
I forgot you are in Louisiana.
Yeah…that’s why I’ve been considering growing melons in large raised beds.
I learned the rain dance but not the anti-rain dance!
Though that would be more helpful down here…
My first Nancy is growing nicely.
And others are starting, although too early tell on most if they’re viable.
Talking about growing watermelons in containers. I use to water the greenhouse for watermelon breeding on weekends when I was in college. Pot size had a dwarfing affect on watermelon size. An eight inch pot was optimal as a ten inch would make a melon a lot bigger and need more water to mature. Since they didn’t need but so many seeds per cross, mini melons were fine.
They were trained to one vine up to the roof and back down to bench level where the cross was made. Biggest thing I remember was how hot that section was kept day and night over the winter. Of course the greenhouse was heated with the huge steam plant that heated all the campus buildings so it got as hot as you wanted it.
I also remember when we used fumigate bombs to control whiteflies, aphids and mites. Seal it up tight and release the gas. Once it was done you put on a full suit and a huge canister respirator that was fastened to your belt so you could go in and open the vent in the roof. It was a two buddy system so help could be gotten if something went wrong. Skull and Bones on the gas bottles got our attention for sure even being fearless college students!
Oh boy, we are now a rat nursing home, this tree rat refuses to leave us, not dead, not eating anything, all my peaches are not covered and still there.
We only want to dispose dead rat in a trap and not wanting to kill it or pick it up live. But since it’s not eating, traps won’t work.
Edit to add, mission accomplished, my husband just picked it up and put in a bag. It took a while because it’s running toward my melon bed back and forth.
I ran across a study from 1927 in Lincoln Nebraska about the root development of vegetable crops. The chapter on watermelons answered a question I had about lateral development. In their study, Kleckley Sweet melons produced vine lengths of 15 to 18 feet. However they found lateral roots extending beyond from 18 to 21 feet. The vines were not allowed to roots down at nodes as they were moving vines to allow for cultivation during the growing season. Also noted was that the taproot of the direct seeded plant was 48 inches deep. The main root system occupied the top 16 to 20 inches of soil.
A free pdf of the book they wrote is here. It’s an easy read and offers cultural advice as well to many vegetables. (Yes, I have too much free time on my hands some days but I am learning new stuff so not a waste.)
I skimmed thru that book. Very interesting. Lots of work digging out roots on all those crops…!!
That’s 21ft in all directions from the stem. So a single watermelon plant/hill could have roots in an area 42ft in diameter. That’s impressive to say the least. I would have guessed about that for an apple tree.
My pecan tree that’s probably 40ft tall and 50+ yrs old appears to have surface roots about 60ft from the trunk. I determined that when hand digging a water line 12 inches deep.
Picked my first ambrosia melon this morning before work. Yesterday was 50% tan/yellow and the stem was firmly attached. This morning the whole melon was tan/yellow and the stem was separated with just a little nudge. I can’t wait to try it this evening when I get off work! Will report back.
I lifted some seedling avocado pots sitting on the ground in my greenhouse about 10 ft away from one of my watermelons, and the watermelon had sent roots up into the bottoms of the pots. The watermelon smell was clear on the broken roots. Guess I’ll have to move the pots around more often!
It is very common for plants to have root lengths significantly higher than the spread of the plant on the ground. A watermelon with the above root development would occupy over 2000 cubic feet of soil.
I need to check my watermelons, it is about time for a few to ripen.
So I took a chance on this light colored melon.
Underripe. Almost no sweetness. Looks like this is a Lemon Drop melon, though the package photo shows a round fruit and this one is oblong.
Oh and for the record, I’m an add salt to watermelon kind of guy.
where I’m at;
some are great and growing in size fast. it’s been really hot out, they seem to like it. I’m watering daily if it’s over 90F. every other day deep if not. the cantaloupe are the slowest with only flowers so far, but every melon is at least making baby melons now. the Minnesota midgets are ahead of the rest with 3 softball melons on them and more flowering.
Do watermelons ever ‘root’ along the vine? I had that big community garden I grew watermelon at and i put hay on top of the black plastic (to make it look prettier but also to put the hay eventually under the watermelon fruit in chunks to lift it off the ground so they didn’t get rot). The hay where it wasn’t clumped over could get moist, but I never saw any vines root into the moist hay.
I’ve never seen a watermelon root along a vine, but I have seen several relatives such as pumpkins that routinely root at each leaf node.
I have watermelons planted no till that is not on plastic that is rooting at nodes. The key is constant moisture where the vine touches the ground. Rain every couple of days has kept the soil and the natural mulch of dead weeds damp enough to get rooting. Looking around this morning it seems the vine needs to be really flat to the ground to get the roots to emerge. Even a small gap doesn’t stimulate root initiation.
The older vines with melons developing are rooting a few nodes behind the melon. Some I checked have lifted up as the melon is getting bigger and the root tips emerging have turned brown in the air. But nodes further away are firmly in the ground. A quick check this morning on a vine that is reaching 13 feet from the base is rooting along about half that is in contact with ground. Now its running up the deer fence so no more rooting.
I have not had more than 6 days of no rain since mid June. Got 2.3 inches yesterday and severe weather outlook for today so plenty of moisture for awhile to come. It will be interesting to see at the end of season how deep those nodal roots went and how big the melons get on those vines. I do have most of my melons on ground cover but some of those are now past the cover so I will do a little experiment pinning the vine flat the ground and see how quick it will root.
