Watermelon Growing

I got it out of my system, managed to grow a few seedless minis as well as more normal varieties

But the soil here just doesn’t do watermelons well, whereas I always get a nice crop of cucumis melons - Charentais types you can’t get in the stores

Hey are you guys rotating? I was told 5 years before watermelons can be planted in the same spot again.

Does anyone cover crop their melon patches with mustard for disease suppression? A friend got a bag of mustard seed meal but it came all the way from Italy (as a labeled product) and is too expensive for me.

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Yes I rotate on a 4-5 yr time frame.

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No, not if the stem is still green. The orange lines will become
more distinct and the rind will go from shiny to dull. It needs to
have a good hollow sound too, when you thump it. But each melon has
it’s own signs and these are some of them. The old two dried tendril
method rarely works.

No, I don’t spray at all. As the melons ripen, you’re going to see
some of the vines starting to die. This is just a natural progression,
but that vine has exhausted itself. Many people stagger their plantings
in order to extend the season, once the first vines die off.

We move our melon patch around every year and eventually get back to the original spot in 5 or so years. We do grow mustard in the same spots sometimes but it’s just a coincidence for us. We have grown brown and yellow mustard. We use mustard to make pickling spice, mustard, seasoning. If your interested in growing mustard you might want to see this post from last year Mustard seed Harvest. I got the yellow mustard seed from www.foodtolive.com so I could grow it as well as brown seed.

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I guess I’m the only one that doesn’t rotate. I plant the same areas
every year. Am I doing something wrong?

Ray,
We have squash bug problems so that’s how I stay ahead of them. They attack watermelon here. I have 7 garden spots and rotate crops between them. Sometimes we grow watermelon in the same spot two years if no pest bothers them. We do not spray watermelon. Squash bugs and other things that attack watermelon don’t bother mustard, corn etc…

I tend to plant in the same areas every year as well. But I’m constantly adding compost, mulch, and other organics to the soil… though I know that doesn’t help with disease prevention.

I’m with Ray…I grow watermelons in the same area for many years and don’t think it hurts one bit. But lets think about it. 90% of a watermelon patch is the vines, which of course produce plant energy from the sun. The actual point of contact with the ground- the base of the plant, is very small and watermelon plants dont send out many roots or long roots. So the amount of nutrients they pull from the dirt are limited to a small area for each plant-I’d say as little as 1 ft by 1 ft. So even though I use the same general patch area, the chances that I’m putting each plant exactly where a plant was last year are very small. ANd besides, I till my patch a couple times before planting, so the dirt between each plant (which wouldn’t have lost nutrients to the plants the year before) gets mixed in with the little area where the plant base and roots were and which possible is a little depleated from the prior year. SO what I’m saying is watermelons aren’t like most crops where there are large numbers of plants taking nutrients from the soil. A watermelon patch has relatively few actual plants uptaking nutrients. And each plant sends out a great amount of vines that use the sun more than the dirt in terms of area used.

Thats a long and probably not well explained reason that I don’t think planting watermelons in the same general area is nearly as bad as it is to plant most other things in the same spot. I also know that in Cordell Georgia, the watermelon capital of the world, they have grown watermelons in the same fields since right after the civil war (really).

Last but not least, I do fertilize my plants quite a bit. I especially try to go out and sprinkle some triple 15 general fertilizer around each plant base right before a rain. About 3 days later you see a dramatic increase in new vine growth and melon size. I’ve seen a few people claim frequent and heavy fertilize is bad for watermelons and if some of you feel that way then you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I am a strong believer in the frequent and heavy use of fertilize to grow big, sweet, healthy, proper shaped watermelons. Of course you have to be reasonable enough in application not to burn the plants up, which isn’t hard to do. But I firmly believe anything less than a burning amount is great, especially in combination with rain.

Climate matters. I’ve never been able to grow decent watermelons here in northern Wisconsin. Aldis grocery store has great watermelons and muskmelons for low prices, so I don’t waste garden space trying to grow them any more.

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Kevin I agree with you about tilling every year. It not only keeps the soil
loose, but it also helps to keep it aerated, which is key to holding down
pests and disease, which I never have. I also keep the PH at a high level, by
the addition of lime. One of my patches is on top of a large decaying tree
root system, which used to always plague me with extremely hard petrified like fungal growth. Three years ago, I limed the heck out of that patch, and the fungus has since disappeared, and has not returned.
I only fertilize, when I till,and again when the plants start to run. You’re staying away from high nitrogen, which is very important. Too much nitrogen will lead to white hearts

The roots spread far and wide and they pull nutrients from the whole area. If plants are spaced say 4ft by 10ft, they draw nutrients and water from that entire area.

Apparently you guys don’t have soil borne disease issues. Maybe I don’t either. Rotation is just an insurance policy against problems developing.

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Hey Ray, just to bug you- well, maybe just to mention what I believe is the science- my understanding is that a lower pH discourages fungus. Of course, that is no proof that a higher pH in your particular soil with your particular fungus wasn’t knocked out by the lime- I’m not qualified to pass judgement on that.

Potato scab is controlled by keeping soil quite acid.

Alan, just to bug you back, I don’t have potato scab. In fact, I’ve
never grown potatoes, and could care less about your scientific
understanding.

It’s neither here nor there in terms of how to grow watermelons, but I think one reason so many are grown throughout the southeast is because they are one of the few marketable field crops that thrive in a long, hot, humid summer season. Then they are out of the ground before frosty weather arrives. There’s only a handful of crops that do well in those conditions.

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Ah, but I care. Scab is a fungus and fungus is reduced by acidity. Therefore I believe your experience with limestone may have been coincidental. I assume you posted your experience as a tip- so mine is a caveat to your tip. It might be helpful, even to someone that grows potatoes.

Darn forums.

Around here where our soil is acidic and our biggest weeds are pine trees (said tongue-in-cheek), liming is a normal step in prepping garden soil. However, if truckloads of composted manure and sand have been added, who knows what the pH of the mixture in the root zone will be? I don’t.

I have rotting wood and stumps all over the place. All sorts of interesting fungi grow on them. If those types of fungi are harmful, I’ve been unaware of that. I’ve always thought they were doing their job of breaking down the decaying wood, and didn’t think of them as harmful to living vegetation.

The blossoms in the photo are now mature butternut squash and the mushrooms are nowhere to be seen in the summer heat.

Edit to add: Neither the mushrooms nor the squash were intentional plantings. The mushrooms sprouted from the decaying stump and the squash (plus tomatoes and watermelon) from the dressing of kitchen compost.

That’s not my experience but thank-you for your input.

Thank you very much Clark, not sure if i will have time for a seed crop this year in last year’s patch but I will give it a go and just incorporate into the soil if not.

Ray it sounds like you had reishi mushrooms, or some other woody polypore species growing from the buried roots. Stumps and roots can produce mushrooms for many years after the tree is gone.

Muddy, those are a type of inky cap mushroom. They get their name because after sending out spores the caps will rapidly turn into an ink like liquid and disappear.

My patch this year.

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