I make sure they don’t stray outside the wood chip areas.
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I start them May 10th to 20th and have some in the ground by May 25 with milk jugs on top. They sit there not doing much whole the roots form and vines take off about June 25 with a bunch of melons setting by July 4th in a good year like this year. Will definetly have ripe melons by august 15th on the 80 day varieties. September first on the long day.
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you dont have issues with late frosts? 2 springs ago we got a frost down to 22 june 14 here. i cant see putting melons in before jun15 here.
Wow! What a different world you live in.
Earliest frost I can remember here at my house the last 27 years is perhaps late October.
I think I’ve got 2 Blacktail Mountain watermelons about ready…one nice sized and the other smaller. Both have just had their tendrils dry up.
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yeah we get at max 3 months of good growing weather here. 1st fall frosts in mid late sept.
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Let it dry all the way up.
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Anyone know what this may be? I tried googling the Park Seeds info and could not find it. It is currently growing nicely here in SoCal.
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I think it may actually be this French Orange Hybrid Melon Seeds from Seedsdiscount [05201-PK-P1] - $3.60 | Seedsdiscount
May 20 to 31st is last frost time here. Which is one reason for the milk jugs at planting. I’ve also direct seeded as late as June 10th with 80 day melons and got good harvest by early September.
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So I cut open one of my Ultra Cool seedless from ferry Morse. Turns out the seed I actually got in the packet was a pollenizer variety full of seeds. Havnt tasted it yet as it’s chilling in the fridge but it looks ripe enough to be decent. The other 3 seedless varieties I purchased from park seed and look exactly like their photo so hopefully those will be seedless. Have a couple of those with dry tendrils I’ll cut in the next week.
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Many sellers of seedless watermelon seed include a few pollenizer seed in the pack. For example, purchase 10 seed and get 6 pollenizer seed. The two varieties are chosen so that the ripe melons have different color/shape so you know which has seed.
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This packet said requires pollinator sold separately. The park seed packets I did not plant the pollinator seeds as I am growing several seeded varieties in the same patches.
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Picked my second Blacktail Mountain melon. Small… Only 8 lbs.
Tried it while still hot… Not very good. Almost all seeds were black but some white. No worse than store bought as far as the ratio of black to white seeds.
I don’t know if it’s just because the damn thing was 100° but the taste was rather insipid.
I’ve a large one, probably 12 lbs, that is close. Will try to restrain myself and let it ride for a while longer.
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For me, watermelons have to be ice cold to taste good.
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I’m icing the rest and will try again tomorrow.
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I’m cooling off two overnight from my second harvest. We can both enjoy tomorrow. We’ll both need it in this heat.
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Mine wasn’t too good. A bit over ripe. When that starts happening I throw away the over ripe and keep picking more melons until I find one I like.
Overripe watermelons are wonderful for people like me who save seed.
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