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Post by terracotta on Feb 11, 2012 14:59:09 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 11, 2012 15:55:11 GMT -5
thought it was a good idea since most watermelons die at around 70 degrees. Any varieties can you suggest? My family's subvariety of Charleston gray is about the only melon that produces reliably for me year after year. Blacktail mountain is earlier and sweeter, but it grows slowly and less vigorously. For next year I have seeds from the Keen101 watermelon proto-landrace, and from a new watermelon proto-landrace from northern Missouri, and from the 5 fruits that survived in my garden last year out of ~600 seeds that were planted. We've swapped seeds this winter among each of these breeding programs. I've sent seed from each of them to many collaborators in similarly cold or short season climates. My sharing-seed is exhausted for this season. |
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Post by castanea on Feb 11, 2012 16:07:58 GMT -5
They don't die at 70 degrees. They just grow more slowly as they get further below 80. Even heat loving varieties like Carolina Cross can tolerate night time temperatures into the 50s. |
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Post by terracotta on Feb 12, 2012 17:20:46 GMT -5
"Seedlings grown at temperatures below 20°C often develop a foliar mottle and stunting. A persistent low temperature is conducive to more prominent foliar symptoms, malformation, and growth retardation" "Seedling leaf variegation slv (Provvidenti, 1994) causes a variegation resembling virus infection on seedlings. It is linked or pleiotropic with Ctr for cool temperature resistance." "The single dominant gene Ctr was provided cool temperature resistance (Provvidenti, 1992, 2003)" Ctr from line PP261-1 (a single plant selection of PI 482261 from Zimbabwe); ctr from 'New Hampshire Midget' cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cgc/cgcgenes/wmgenes/gene07wmelon.htmlhere is what the university of Saskatchewan recommends www.usask.ca/agriculture/plantsci/vegetable/resources/database/watermelon/watermelon06.pdf |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 12, 2012 17:49:50 GMT -5
"Seedlings grown at temperatures below 20°C often develop a foliar mottle and stunting. A persistent low temperature is conducive to more prominent foliar symptoms, malformation, and growth retardation" Ha! All this time I though that was normal for watermelon. Good thing I am too occupied during summer time to travel and visit other gardens in warmer climates where watermelon might actually thrive rather than just survive. If I saw what a healthy watermelon is supposed to look like I might just give up!  |
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Post by nathan125 on Feb 12, 2012 17:57:50 GMT -5
in the summer, i'm lucky to have nighttime temps in the mid 50's. 90-95 during the day 50-55 at night. ah!
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Post by castanea on Feb 12, 2012 18:18:58 GMT -5
"Seedlings grown at temperatures below 20°C often develop a foliar mottle and stunting. A persistent low temperature is conducive to more prominent foliar symptoms, malformation, and growth retardation" Ha! All this time I though that was normal for watermelon. Good thing I am too occupied during summer time to travel and visit other gardens in warmer climates where watermelon might actually thrive rather than just survive. If I saw what a healthy watermelon is supposed to look like I might just give up! Here in the central valley we get some summers where we have warmer night time temperatures and many watermelons do fairly well. A few years ago we had 3 days in a row over 105 during the day while smoke from wildfires provided a blanket during the night that kept temperatures up. In just one week the watermelons put on more growth than they had in the previous month. This last summer we had our coolest weather in the last 100 years. No watemelon diseases, but they grew very slowly and didn't set fruit until it was too late in the season to mature fruit. |
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Post by castanea on Feb 13, 2012 21:29:22 GMT -5
Who do you contact at Known You if you want to purchase more than $300 worth of seed?
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Post by castanea on Feb 14, 2012 0:17:17 GMT -5
For a cold tolerant watermelon, check out the new thread in the Cucurbitacea
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Post by terracotta on Feb 15, 2012 19:52:22 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 15, 2012 20:08:21 GMT -5
My growing conditions are so radically different from those found in Russia, and I have tried so many "Siberian" varieties that did very poorly in my garden, that I can't get excited about trying one more supposedly cold tolerant Russian plant. My garden is colder, and my growing season is shorter. The sun is much hotter, and the air is tremendously dryer. The variation between nighttime and daytime temperatures is twice as much in my garden as it is in Russia. The Siberian varieties might be good candidates for growing in the pacific northwest, but they are particularly unsuitable to my garden. Varieties from Iowa grow better in my garden than those from Russia. I ordered the Burley Idaho watermelon seeds today. We'll see how they grow without season extension techniques. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Feb 15, 2012 20:34:38 GMT -5
I should have taken down some notes, but i think my watermelon plants lasted into the late fall until something like 38F. After that were all black. But that might have been daytime temps. I still don't know how your supposed to know what the nighttime temps are. They did grow slowly in May, but they did grow.
weather.com says my GDD for a base of 50F (10C) in 2011 was 2740.5 GDD. 1351.5 GDD for a base of 60F (15.5C). Not sure which is a better base for watermelons, but maybe since they don't grow very fast under 60F it might be better.
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Post by terracotta on Feb 17, 2012 12:24:18 GMT -5
thanks for the source keen 101. Joseph i would look into a soil test it seems your fields are calcium deficient. Calcium is essential for cold tolerance, pollination and fruit development. You know that grayish\black spots on tomatoes? it happens to melons also.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2012 12:55:22 GMT -5
Joseph i would look into a soil test it seems your fields are calcium deficient. Calcium is essential for cold tolerance, pollination and fruit development. You know that grayish\black spots on tomatoes? it happens to melons also. My soil is derived from Calcium Carbonate (limestone). It is what it is. There would be no reason for doing a test because I am not interested in changing my soil. Even if I did a test, I am a subsistence farmer, and too poor to add enough amendments to make any difference. That sort of thinking: to buy products and services from The Company in order to change the soil to fit the unadapted plant that The Company provides; represents the dominant western world-view that I am trying to get away from. I would rather ask the plants to change in order to work with my garden. I will search until I find genetics that thrive with my unamended soil, and my extreme radiant cooling at night, and my brilliant high-altitude sunlight, and my bugs, and my super low humidity, and my weeding practices, and my extremely short growing season, and my philosophy towards growing. I am happy to report that I don't know anything about spots on fruit or plants. The humidity in my garden is much too low for the spot causing diseases to take hold. Once in a great while a Roma that I purchase from the nursery has blossom end rot, but that's just defective genetics, I don't ever plant seeds from affected plants and the problem goes away. GDD:2000 70 to 80%RH Alfisols powdery and downy mildew fusarium wilt, rust, various damping off fungus What's your base temperature for the GDD calculations? |
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Post by terracotta on Feb 17, 2012 13:20:42 GMT -5
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