You know, I’ve been meaning to get a trail cam anyway. That is a great idea. If its mice or voles they probably won’t show up but if I get the broken vines and no visible critters, that will tell me it probably is something small enough to crawl around under the leaves. You can imagine how frustrating it is to have a nice watermelon I’v waited 2.5 months on and which is only 2 weeks from being ready, then all of a sudden the vine is cut and of course the melon will stop growing and ripening! Grrr!
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I would be so upset, too.
My wm growing this year isn’t great. My 10 plants produce fewer than 10 wm so far. Slow start and slow going.
You should see my Sivan F1 melon. One plant, it produces 20 melons so far. Do you know if I need to thin those melons?
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I had a pack rat doing strange things in my garden a few years ago, so I set a “live trap” and caught him. I think I set the trap with cat food, but I’m not sure.
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Thanks Johnny. I see a lot of field mice and shrews around my garden so that could be it
BTW…Loving your photo! I am the world’s biggest gunsmoke fan, and on the very serious question of “Festus or Chester” I’m 100% Festus. Looks like you are too! ha
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Picked about a half dozen Sorbet Swirls today. Just a recap, Johnny’s is selling these as F1 hybrids, but their description doesn’t fit, in other words they are not consistent. So I thought they could be F4s or something like that. We’ll, this year (F3 generation if they were indeed F1s when I started) there is more variation than last year. One plant looks like it may be a cross with Little Baby Flower, but I’ve only cut one that was a typical representation of SS so far.
I’ve read just a little about watermelon genetics, and don’t remember a red/yellow interior being described aside from segregating generations, so maybe I won’t be able to get it normalized into an open pollinated variety at all…
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I’ve picked seven in the past five days. They’re not as big this next I planted a few more plants in the same amount of space. Biggest so far is 36-lb’er.
The Gold Strike below is a 17-lb’er and perfectly ripe. We’ll share it with friends tomorrow The first one I picked a few days ago was a little overripe, with a gritty heart. The taste was excellent, however, and we enjoyed sharing it with our neighbors.
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@MNmelons, I’m going to have to try those Janosiks. That looks great.
@thecityman, I see that on my vines, too. I presume it’s a bug or beetle of some type.
@ctduckhunter, that’s a great harvest! How many hills did you plant? We’ve eaten a superb Big Stripe already and gave a second away to friends. Man, that’s a good variety.
No pics, but I also picked a Moon and Stars that had a little bit of hollow heart, but the flavor is so good. This is the crispiest variety I’ve eaten. The seeds are HUGE and few in number.
@Stephen03, next year I’m trying that Summer flavor 720 based on your feedback.
@hoosierbanana, how did those taste?
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For anyone wanting Janosik seeds I’d order them now. They are back in stock at baker creek, but things have been selling out a lot there.
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Ate this one last night. Another 20 pounder. Lighter in color but super sweet all the way to the rind.
[quote=“northof53, post:1, topic:26795, full:true”]
I thought we needed a thread for the new year. This year I am back to melons, Crimson Sweet and Petite Gris.
What is everyone else growing, anything new and exciting to try, any melon that was particularly a bust last season?
[/quote]
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Second Orangeglo of the season. Weighed just 10 lbs according to my bathroom scale. I had to weigh it along with me, don’t know accurate it is.
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How did it taste?
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You know I love those OG…that looks nice, but maybe a little overripe? Hard to tell from photo- as long it it tasted good is all that matters.
Not quite as sweet as the first one but tastes way better than store bought!
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It does melt in the mouth so maybe it is overripe. But no off taste. I have about 6-7 more in the field.
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My dad and I planted 165 hills. Big stripe and Charleston Grey did the best for us this year. Jade Star did good again but I lost a bunch of the plants early after getting hailed on and had to replace with another variety. Crimson sweet, jubilee improved, sangria, and summer flavor 720 did good but not as productive as those top 3. I’m going to pick 50 or 60 again in a couple days and do a taste test on atleast 3 varieties and do a brix test with pics. I’ve only tried one crimson sweet so far that wasn’t great, all the rest (except black diamond) have been great and hard to pick a winner with my taste buds. I can tell you the loser again is black diamond. Dad planted atleast 20 hills of black diamonds that I’m pretty sure will not make a good melon. We have tried several, and they just will not ripen up.
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I planted some Black Diamond myself, and I just picked the first one today. I’ll cut it in a couple days to see if it’s ripe. It’s not as big as I had hoped. I hope I didn’t pick it too early, but it seemed to have stop growing and showed the other alleged signs of ripeness. We’ll see.
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I am in zone 6a and made mistakes by planting Black Diamond two years in a row in 2018 and 2019. The melons were huge but they never ripened in time.
@rayrose pointed out that if you don’t have a long sumner, Black Diamond will not ripen for you. It was very true for me.
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I’m not sure if long summers has anything to do with it here. We have plenty of summer left here and did last year too. Something is definitely weird about them. Maybe they are melons that need thinned. We don’t thin to one or two melons per vine like some people on YouTube. Maybe if I took the time to do this, I would have one or two 35 pound great melons instead of five or six 25 pounders that don’t ripen. I don’t know, but too much work for my system to thin melons. We won’t grow these again. I can’t remember who on here said it, but someone said they will not ripen unless they get a certain size, I believe that! That statement is not true with any other melons I grow. My 23 lb big stripe will be equally as good or better than my 35 lb big stripe. We didn’t fertilize either, maybe that would help although the rest did fine without it. I am going to fertilize next year though.
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