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Post by philip on Jun 7, 2015 5:07:40 GMT -5
Some pictures of melons    The first one is "Ananas" from Russia, not doing very well. Second one is a melon from Kazakhstan, the biggest one. Third is the farthest north melon mix already flowering. |
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Post by philip on Jun 7, 2015 5:39:21 GMT -5
And two watermelon pictures. Smallest one "Early Moonbeam", largest one "Early Canada". Same stone for size comparison.  Early Moonbeam  Early Canada |
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Post by glenn10 on Jun 7, 2015 21:46:34 GMT -5
Hi Glen, where do you live? I am about to sow tomorrow. Weather forecast is getting better, it seems a kind of summer is coming... I will sow direct into the ground and protect it with a vlies to raise temperatures. Seed swap is a good idea! Mikkel I live In Canada, Newbrunswick just outside a small town of Salisbury and my property runs down to a tidal river which is connected to the bay of Fundy(a short 30 minute drive and I can see the ocean) so I do get a lot of cooling influence from the bay. we do get some good hot days in July in the high 20's and usually a few days in the low 30's.Frost comes by the end of September. In my area it would definitely be too late to try any direct seeding, I feel I am probably pushing my mid may direct seeding and I may need to put a high tunnel over them in September to get them to ripen. Normally I plant indoors mid April and plant out mid may under mini greenhouses and by mid june I can usually remove them for the remainder of the season. I have in the past direct seeded in June and the fruit did not develop any good sugar by frost in September and as the day light lessens and the night temps get lower they just sit there and don't develop any growth. I find to get good sugar and flavour I need to set fruit by the end of June/early July which is extremely difficult with direct sow even with a poly greenhouse. In the first photos I have some new varieties I am trying which are not early ones by any means but just for fun so these guys I started early. 
These next ones are direct seeded with the poly cover to warm the soil to speed up germination. I am really going to try and not intervene through the season only towards the end if they need some help to ripen I will put up a tunnel. 
As you can see I just dug a little trench and threw in a "shitload" of seeds (stole that one from ferdzy) so everyone is quite crowded.
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Post by imgrimmer on Jun 10, 2015 12:57:59 GMT -5
@glenn, your "all in one trench" method is pretty much the same I do. I try to keep at least 2 cm between the seeds but at the end when my hands are still full of seeds I go backwards and end like you  |
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Post by philip on Jul 16, 2015 15:24:15 GMT -5
A couple of weeks have passed and the melons have been growing well. I had to add more black plastic to the sides cause the melons were growing over the edges. I now have more than 7 foot of plastic on each side of the melon row. To my surprise the watermelons seem to do a bit better than the melons in terms of setting fruit so far but i know from having grown some in the tunnel last year that the crucial bit is not growing a nice tasting watermelon but having the seeds ripen inside of the fruit. This is not a problem with the melons but they struggle do produce nice-tasting fruit outdoors here. So considering that i nver grew watermelons outdoors here before i am astonished as to how well they are doing. Fingers crossed for some good weather in the next couple of weeks. 
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Post by templeton on Jul 16, 2015 18:11:56 GMT -5
I'm also interested in early melons, but for the opposite reason - I need fruit that mature early so I don't have to water them so much through our now annual summer droughts. I've started selecting from Farthest North. I'm looking after my original packet of seeds - melon seed have just become a restricted import to Aust.
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Post by steev on Jul 16, 2015 19:18:58 GMT -5
Guess I got Dry Wit to you guys in Oz in the nick of time; they're starting to tease Cali with predictions of El Nino, which would portend (maybe) a wet year for us and a dry year for you. They're so non-committal in their forecasts that I think they make them by examining the entrails of a chupacabra or drop-bear or something.
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Post by glenn10 on Jul 16, 2015 19:38:05 GMT -5
Great looking patch Philip! The black plastic really helps a lot. I used to use it or that black weed barrier stuff but last year and this year I have not used it in an attempt to get the fittest to survive the competition with the weeds......not really working out for me yet LOL. I don't pull any weeds just give them a trim with a blade to allow light in. I had a really great crop last year and hoping for a repeat this season. Here are my update pics. this first one is the breeding patch row directly seeded  Its hard to see through all the weeds! I put some mulch around these guys last night to "baby" them a little bit. they are progressing really slow as it has been an unuasually cool year with very cools nights. 2 hours north of me is expecting frost tonight!  here is a close up and amazingly enough they are pushing some male flowers  the next pics are from the green housed melons  this last row in the greenhouse patch are some seeds from the yellow canary melon "tweety" from last year and are currently the most vigorous plants this year  and there are lots of cuke beetle ravaged female flowers.  |
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Post by philip on Aug 26, 2015 16:39:01 GMT -5
First melon harvest! It is very wet here at the moment and i found a ripe Blenheim Orange melon, which i ate, that was excellent and a ripe Lunéville that was very good. Both were cracked or damaged though and quite a few melons seemed to start to rot. Maybe the downside of using black plastic is that at harvest time the melons are sitting in little puddles of water... All the other ones i tried were not so good. So i decided to harvest quite a few and to see whether they might finish ripening indoors. I read that some melons won't get sweeter or better after having been cut off but others can still ripen indoors so i am just trying things out. The leaves of the plants are slowly fading away so it's easier to see the melons now. I estimate that i got 50-60 melons from 12 plants which is really good. There are still more melons left on the plants outside than the ones in the picture. I am very happy about the productivity of especially Blenheim Orange and Lunéville that gave me well over 10 melons per plant (i only have one plant of each) They are also fairly big. The 6 ones at the bottom are Blenheim Orange. The 4 ones on the right are Lunéville. The 4 small ones on top are from the Farthest North melon mix and the 4 below are the Kazakhstan melon. The ones on the left with the cut melon are from a plant sown as Kazakhstan that most likely crossed with Blenheim last year cause the shape is in between the two. So all in all it's a success because i got ripe seeds to continue to work with. The weather is not very good at all at the moment so i don't know if some melons will get ripe before rotting. Ananas didn't do very well but there is one fruit and Petit gris still has very green leaves with the melons not being ripe yet. The watermelons did really well, too and i will write another post about them soon. |
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Post by philagardener on Aug 26, 2015 20:21:20 GMT -5
Maybe the downside of using black plastic is that at harvest time the melons are sitting in little puddles of water... All the other ones i tried were not so good. Those look great, philip ! I've seen some folks elevate melons on small block of wood to help keep them drier. |
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Post by steev on Aug 27, 2015 0:38:07 GMT -5
I use plasticized paper plates (having no summer rain), Holly uses CD cases; having no rainwater issues, we're both more concerned with gophers, I think.
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Post by toad on Aug 31, 2015 11:11:06 GMT -5
In my garden, melons was a disaster in open ground. I transplanted and sowed on 5th of June. The next month was cold day and night. None of the seeds germinated, and the transplant ran out of energy, slowly dying over 3-4 weeks.
In the greenhouse I grow watermelons, Josephs landrace, Moon Bean and Early Canada. Only two of Josephs have set watermelons, and that is quite impressive in this summer. Now I wait impatient.
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Post by imgrimmer on Aug 31, 2015 16:59:01 GMT -5
the same here in northern Germany, only a few direct sown melons germinated. my only 3 watermelon plants from my own seeds have only male flowers the only female one drop off.  I will build a cold frame and hope for a good sunny autumn.... and a tiny fruit with seeds for next year... |
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Post by glenn10 on Aug 31, 2015 19:50:46 GMT -5
It's nice to see others are also suffering from a cooler than normal growing year LOL. At our home to give you a comparison from what we typically expect each year and have seen for the past ten years is for example English cucumbers we would be eating them on a really good year last week of June normally though first week of July right around the 4th of July......this year first week of august! Melons generally set fruit by end of June to first week in July and are harvesting wonderfully ripe melons mid august....this year first fruit set was on July 24th which was a new variety I tried this year(Minnesota midget) and just picked it this morning. Every year we grow a few giant pumpkins for fun and it has become a bit of a tradition now to have our family photo each fall with them...we have zero pumpkins this year! It definitely was not a warm weather crop year most nights in July were single digit Celsius just kissing the frost warning mark.....Hopefully next year will be better.  This has to be the smallest melon I have ever grown! LOL! |
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Post by steev on Sept 1, 2015 2:05:41 GMT -5
I must admit that my melons are late through no fault of their own, but due to my fear of drought and gimpiness of foot, were planted out late; nevertheless, they are doing their best to produce and may yet succeed. I certainly hope they do, as some will deliver F3 seed.
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