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slowpoke_gardener

Melon question

slowpoke_gardener
11 years ago

I have tried growing watermelons and cantaloupe once before and it was a big flop. I tried again this year and got some cantaloupes that I was happy with, but the melons not so well. They started out very well but have grown everywhere. I think the weeds and grass has grown up in them and shading them. I just planted one hill in an area of about 40 sq. ft.. I placed 16' cattle panels on 3 sides of them. They have grown out into the yard, into the pasture and up the 3 cattle panels.

I would like to try melons again next year but would like a compact kind. I think some of you said something about growing them on a trellis. I would like to know what kind you would suggest. The kind I planted are crimson sweet, I think they are too large for a trellis. The fruit seems to have quit growing and I am afraid it is because of all the weeds and grass.

On a side note the last planting of cantaloupe seems to have stalled also, but they are in the garden in a clean weed free area. Thanks for all input.

Larry

Comments (5)

  • properprim
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm no expert but I did produce some melons on a trellis this summer. Still have some growing...some even snuck over to the tomatoes and are hanging there! Once one gets a bit big on the trellis I just made some slings out of an old t-shirt...works fine! I tried to upload a photo. HOpe it works:)

  • properprim
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    here's page 2

  • properprim
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    These are 3 pages of a pdf I found on the Urban Farming website. Can't find it now, so I couldn't list the URL. Easy to make and really pretty when covered with vine!

  • slowpoke_gardener
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Kbeth, thanks for the instructions. What kind of melons did you grow? Mind take up about 5 times as much space as I would like to give them.

    Larry

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Larry, On a trellis, and on the ground as well, I usually grow some combination of the following: Sugar Baby, Bush Sugar Baby, Blacktail Mountain (superior flavor to the others), Tiger Baby, Yellow Doll, Yellow Baby, and New Orchid. Three of those I get in one seed packet from Rene's Garden seeds, which I'll link below. All of these produce what are called refrigerator melons because of the compact fruit size, which makes it easy to put a whole watermelon in the refrigerator without it taking up all the space you have. Since all of these are relative small, I don't bother with slings for them. I will use slings if I am growing any melons that get larger than, say, a volleyball.

    My largest watermelon grown on a trellis this year was just about the size of a volleyball, and I don't know which one it is yet. I think it is New Orchid or Yellow Doll, but I just picked it yesterday and haven't cut into it yet. My trellis is just green metal T-posts with sturdy galvanized woven wire fencing attached to the trellis using wire or zip-ties.

    I always leave an empty space of about 8-10" between the ground and the bottom of the trellis's fencing. That is because I have learned the hard way that if my trellis comes all the way down to the ground, then weeds that sprout close the fencing are harder to get to and harder to pull. With the trellis raised above the ground I can reach under it and pull out anything that sprouts there.

    This year all my trellised plants have left their trellis and run and meandered all over the place and even climbed one another's trellises, so it is a jungle out there, with cantaloupes, refrigerator melons, cucumbers, Armenian cukes and winter squash all growing together into a big jungle, complete with some Grandpa Ott's Morning Glories. It is a mess, but I love my mess and the combination of all those plants together prevented sunburn from damaging the melons for as long as I still was watering and had good foliage.

    I think I get better pollination and better fruit set with trellised plants because it is easier for the bees and other pollinators to find the flowers.

    Last night I went out and harvested watermelons and cantaloupes. I didn't expect much because I hadn't watered them the last couple of weeks, and they already had produced tons of fruit so I wasn't sure how much fruit was left hiding in those vines. I gave up on watering once we were hitting at least 108-110 every day. At that point, with it being this dry, I cannot water enough. However, since a lot of fruit had formed and was maturing, I still am harvesting some of the melons that were large enough when I stopped watering that they were able to go ahead and size up well and mature. Yesterday I brought in 11 cantaloupes and 7 watermelons. Today I brought in a pumpkin, found two more underneath a vine that is still a little green, so I left them there to mature a bit more, and I gathered 6 or 8 immature melons and cantaloupes that have sunburned. Some of them are as large as 75% of their mature size, but when I cut into them, I think they won't be mature yet. I'll feed them to the chickens.

    There's several other melon varieties that are sort of in the middle range--bigger than a refrigerator melons and smaller than a standard field watermelon. One I intend to try next year is Shiny Boy. Even though its vines are longer than a typical icebox melon (supposed to get about 12' long) and its fruit is larger (up to 12 lbs.), people who have trellised it have been very happy with its performance on trellises.

    Dawn

    Here is a link that might be useful: Rainbow Sherbet Watermelon Seed Mix

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