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Post by taihaku on Jun 27, 2017 6:07:33 GMT -5
After figuring out that the slugs were the cause of my plants' demise in the last years the plants are doing really well this year. We have had a really warm summer here in Germany which has also helped a lot. In a giant black bucket I have planted two Watermelons: Bozeman and Sugar Pot. They are growing great and I look forward to crossing them. I lost the plants of Joseph's watermelon I put outside to slugs. I'm lucky that the ones inside are doing very well. I think next year I'll be trying the bucket also. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jun 28, 2017 10:12:44 GMT -5
ericbernhard, yeah, the plants seem to be doing well. Some are certainly growing faster/better than others. I am trying to weed out any that are truly slow growing or tiny. Would be happy to share if i get anything remarkable or early.
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Post by mskrieger on Sept 7, 2017 17:11:07 GMT -5
Reports? Did any of you end up with fruit? As I reported in my thread 'melons or bust', I got wonderful fruit from two varieties, supposedly hybrids, bred to do well in northeast US, especially in high tunnels or greenhouses or on black plastic. I used none of that. Other melons, from France and southern US, produced fruit with no flavor, probably because we did not get enough heat.
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Post by ferdzy on Sept 7, 2017 19:21:27 GMT -5
Yesterday and today we ate the first 2 ripe melons from our Golden-Rind project. (We are crossing Golden Midget with other melons in the hopes of producing a bigger, better Golden Midget; a golden short-ass-but-not-midget, if you will).
The good news: the smaller of the 2 was just a hair smaller than last years largest (by far) which was also its mother. The largest was noticeably larger than that. I'm talking .85 and 1.1kg respectively.
Now I just want their offspring to double in size... hey ho.
The bad news: flavour was adequate. Seeds were more plentiful than I like to see, and a shade underripe.
On the whole I feel like we are making progress. There will likely be 2 more waves of ripe fruit from this project before frost (I hope) which should yield some larger but not necessarily golden when ripe melons (but they will be carrying the gene, so I'm not kicking them out of the gene pool yet.)
In particular, I have high hopes for a single plant which germinated in the late spring from all the extra seed I dumped out on the melon bed last fall. It started a bit late, being self-seeded and will probably not be more days-to-maturity than the ones I just picked even though it will likely not ripen for another week or two. I fertilized it with pollen from the plants that produced the 2 melons described above and it already looks like being a fair bit bigger.
Since I am trying to breed watermelons for crappy Canadian summers I guess I can't complain when we get a crappy Canadian summer. Thins the herd. And yeah, the herd is being thinned.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 8, 2017 13:45:34 GMT -5
Quick update: Yes! I got a few small but edible yellow fleshed watermelons i'm happy with. The person nearby that let me trial run my landrace seeds on his Pick-your-own-orchard farm grew them on naturally fertilized and on black plastic. Those ones did well and i picked and purchased some of those as well. Only one of those so far was pink fleshed and had so/so flavor. There was was one that has Salmon-yellow flesh that was also so/so. The rest have so far been Canary Yellow and delicious! ...So it seems that without even drastic selection my watermelons are being selected for yellow flesh... from his farm i also even picked a long one that appears to be Joseph's traditional Charleston Grey variety in terms of shape, size, and pattern... BUT... is also yellow fleshed!
I've taken a few pics, but not of all. Will try to post some soon.
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Post by ericbernhard on Sept 10, 2017 9:22:25 GMT -5
Despite the warmer temperatures at the beginning this summer ended up being fairly standard. A number of melons are still hanging on (quite literally) but I had the chance to harvest a couple already. Here a summary of the results thus far. The hybrid Sensation put on some amazing growth before succumbing to bacterial wilt. Although dissapointing, I was nonetheless proud at my ability to identify bacterial wilt after all these years.  The two neighboring melons fared well. My selection of Farthest North Landrace ripened two smaller melons at the beginning of September, as it has done for the past three years. This year I showed some restraint and let the melons sit on the counter for four days. The taste improved immensely, which makes me finally pleased with this selection. The hybrid Dove is still ripening three decent ragball sized melons. It has withstood a decent amount of disease pressure to make it this far so I am quite pleased with it. The variety Alvaro is still ripening a melon and looks as though it will be able to finish doing so before the first frost. Other than that I don´t have much else of interest to report. All in all I would say that it has been an average but enlightening season. |
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Post by mskrieger on Sept 14, 2017 12:38:06 GMT -5
Glad to hear everyone has gotten fruit. The northern summer lack of heat it what kills most melon flavor for me--most of the plants can produce fruit, it's just not hot enough. ericbernhard my 'Sensation' grows aggressively but suffers from bacterial wilt too. But Sensation managed to produce a couple delicious melons anyway, the disease only set in during a wet, cool August. ferdzy I'm laughing about crappy Canadian summers..may your project be successful and yield much fruit! |
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Post by mskrieger on Sept 14, 2017 12:40:07 GMT -5
As a side note, thinking of the weather...since I had a dramatically cooler, wetter summer than normal, I'm going to plant all the same varieties and seed lots next year too. Gives a chance for a little more germplasm to show its stuff and a chance to see if certain varieties do well in a more typical summer here with several additional weeks of hot days and warm nights (assuming next summer is more typical...).
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 19, 2017 1:44:05 GMT -5
Most of the watermelons are done for the year and eaten already. Many of them were good tasty Canary Yellows. One Salmon-yellow and one Pink were so/so. I'm trying to not save seeds from now on from any that taste bland like the salmon-yellows. Or others that grow poorly. I think i will also start selecting against those that have bacterial rot at the flower end and those that split open. But i'm happy in the direction these are headed. I have a side breeding project where i am letting some Colorado red-seeded citron being pollinated by the landrace watermelon. I'm hoping that in the future that leads to a more cold-tolerant yellow fleshed red-seeded watermelon strain. Some seeds from those are all crazy colors this year with some partially red-black and others with unique gray spots. Just a side project for now. Generally the small bowl-sized watermelons are from my garden. I had the opportunity to have a small local organic farmer grow some of the landrace watermelons for me in fertilized soil and on black plastic. Those ones grew a little bigger for him. I was able to purchase and collect a few of those back. The long one looked like a yellow-fleshed Lofthouse Charleston Gray strain to me... but i don't know for sure. I cut it open a little early. Apparently the long ones take longer to ripen so the dry three-tendril method didn't exactly work on those, but it did for my small round ones!  1504369797202 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  1504731446833 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  1504731553257 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  1504833604041 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  1504913770436 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  1504928247365 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  20170916_131127 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr  20170913_084859 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr |
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Post by steev on Sept 19, 2017 2:19:28 GMT -5
I got one water-melon which I gave my sweet-heart (no reviews, yet), and one other before the ground-squirrels cleaned things out; the one I got was green-fleshed; it got a good review from my landlady, but I was underwhelmed; I saved the seed for re-planting.
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Post by 12540dumont on Sept 19, 2017 10:25:44 GMT -5
Tim Peters did a lot of research on melons for cold climates. Look for some of his seeds. Also Glenn Downs of Northern Idaho (Sand Hill Preservation Center) and Dr. Elwyn Mender of the U. of New Hampshire.
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Post by prairiegardens on Sept 19, 2017 20:10:48 GMT -5
Have you checked if there is anything interesting from Prairie GardenSeed? They don't do breeding as far as I know, they're more about saving heritage varieties, but they grow everything they sell, so their seed should be well adapted to the Canadian prairies at least. No idea how they would do in the humidity of Ontario, if that's where you are. They are pretty objective about their seed unlike most catalogs that rave about each and every item, they never really rave about any of it.  good people to deal with. |
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Post by ferdzy on Oct 9, 2017 9:43:33 GMT -5
So our watermelon projects are winding down for the year. I just posted about it on my blog. seasonalontariofood.blogspot.ca/2017/10/watermelon-projects-update-for-year.htmlWe certainly had a cool climate this year. It was a lousy one for watermelons (and lots of other things too) but I still feel like we made a lot of progress. Another 5 or 10 years and we may be somewhere... I am particularly interested in following up on one melon that came up as a volunteer. I fertilized it with pollen from the plants I expected to ripen the earliest (and in fact they did) and turn yellow when ripe. I have high hopes for next year! |
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Post by reed on Oct 11, 2017 2:31:58 GMT -5
My melons were not as good as last year cause they were in a less ideal spot with a little shade. Still they were great, one vine in particular made wonderful smallish, in five pound range with gray skin and bright yellow inside. We got a lot of smaller ones, I think from the poor growing conditions rather than genetics that were surprisingly good. Same with musk melons although they resented the shade more than the watermelons I think. Not as sweet as last year but still nothing to complain about.
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Post by philip on Jul 8, 2018 13:01:05 GMT -5
Hello,
i am trying my luck again with growing melons outdoors this year. I am growing on black plastic again and i have about 12 plants all of them being Joseph's landrace melons save one which is from a cross i made myself (Minnesota midget x Lunéville)
I am hoping to Harvest some nice melons this year. I sowed seeds of my cross and of Joseph's melons which blew mine out of the water completely (joseph= 87.5 percent germination mine 12.5 percent germination)
I am excited to see what will happen and good luck to you all this year. My camera is broken so i can't take any pictures unfortunately.
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good people to deal with. 