A Melon Experiment

[Kristen]

maybe I'm supposed to pollinate them with a paintbrush as soon as the flowers open? I always get loads of flowers

They tend to produce male flowers to start with, then lots of males and a few females. The males have just a thin stalk behind the flower, the females have a little embryo fruit. I just snap off a male flower and jam it into the female flower (and leave it there) rather than doing the paintbrush/rabbit's tail! thing

do you use a high potassium feed early on?

I use a Tomato fertiliser once the female flowers start appearing.

How do you get in to deal with picking/ tying pollinating etc etc of melons and peppers though?

There are 18 tomato plants, 6 each of 3 varieties, and between each variety I squeeze a bit more space when I plant them, and arrange the training strings "outwards" away from each other, which makes an "access gap" (provided I haven't had a Monster Sunday Roast Lunch!) which I can get to the middle through. My Peppers and Aubergines don't grow huge, so I can sort of get to the Melons. Bit of reaching-over involved though.

The greenhouse is 10' wide so assuming 2' for the central path that's 4' wide beds on each side.

[the big lebowski]

hi all ,wow looking good everyone ,i got a greenhouse for this year and im giving melons a go too ,i`ve gone for emir f1 which are ment to be good in northen areas i`ll let you know how i get on ,cheers

[kris1960]

I'm going to be trying melons for the first time myself this year. I have some honeydew and water melon that will be going into two @rgs coldframe tents (mostly because the seeds came in a couple of multi packs) and some sweetheart melons I'll try vertically in a blow away.

Excuse my ignorance, I've seen this several times in posts, what is a blow away?

[veggiechicken]

A Blowaway is something like this



so-called because it blows away in the wind unless its weighted or tied down.

[kris1960]

Thanks VC.

[goosander]

Grew some water melons [Grimstar]last year in the greenhouse. The fruit was great although not many the taste was like a concentrated shop bought water melon.

[SkyChild]

Ok my "sweet granite" seeds are sown and on the windowsill. Only time will tell how good an idea this was

[Gillykat]

Good luck Skychild

I was in our local Lidl the other day and saw a packet of watermelon ' Sugar Baby' seeds so couldn't resist! I'm going to sow some tomorrow and keep them on my living room window before transferring them to the greenhouse It'll be an interesting experiment to see if I can get any fruit from the plants

[NatalieCooke]

First melon seeds come up yesterday!

[polc1410]

:-( no signs with mine yet...

[polc1410]

:-( no signs with mine yet...

First seedlings have popped up :-D

[SkyChild]

Good luck Skychild

I was in our local Lidl the other day and saw a packet of watermelon ' Sugar Baby' seeds so couldn't resist! I'm going to sow some tomorrow and keep them on my living room window before transferring them to the greenhouse It'll be an interesting experiment to see if I can get any fruit from the plants

Gillykat that sounds amazing. I love watermelon! Just so refreshing in the Summertime.

My seeds seem to be trying to push the compost off the top of themselves in lumps... is that meant to happen? They seem to be quite happy as long as I remember to water them every day (they're on top of a windowsill beside an electric storage heater! Best I could do)

[polc1410]

How deep did you plant them? And did you plant them upright or on their sides or lying down?

But they have a fair bit of strength these are no weedy little lettuce plants!

[SkyChild]

Sown them by putting them on top of potting compost and pushing in to about the same depth as the seed and then scattered a wee bit extra compost on top. Some on their sides, some up and down the way. They are making little leaves so they're probably just stronger than anything else I've grown indoors.

[NatalieCooke]

I've only got one so far. If the other two don't start showing their leaves i'll sown a couple more.