Questions about watermelons

[Pringlays]

Ok so I live in zone 6 so we dont have a really big growing seasons.I ordered a watermelon type called crimson sweet.A few questions though..when should I start them inside?im thinking 3-4 weeks before May right?How do they like there soil,do they need lots of water?Would aged duck manure be ok for them as a compost or should I go for the artificial stuff.Any info would be greatly appreciated thanks!

 

[curly_kate]

I'm in zone 6, too, although in the Midwest. I usually start my seeds about 4 weeks before I set them out, although I direct-seeded some last year, and I think they would have done well if we hadn't has such an unusually cool summer. One thing that really seemed to help was to use a black fabric mulch around them to keep the soil nice & warm. I used the stuff they sell for flowerbeds that you are supposed to cover with bark mulch. I'm not familiar with duck manure, but I used a bunch of well-aged cow manure on mine, and they seemed to like that. I say if you have a free source of natural fertilizer, don't buy any!

 

[Ariel301]

The manure should be fine, as long as you have enough of it. We don't buy fertilizer for our garden, we just use horse/goat/chicken manure.

Crimson Sweet is what we grew last year, but we are in zone 8. Our plants got enormous, some of the vines were pushing 20 feet long! I don't know if this is normal for them or not, but ours all started out with 4-5 melons growing on each plant, then suddenly one would get bigger than the others and the smaller melons would die, leaving each plant to produce 1 melon about 10 pounds. So they took lot of space and water for not much produce...but they were very sweet and juicy. Ours also had a TON of seeds, probably 1000 per melon that I collected for future planting!

 

[vfem]

The manure should be fine, as long as you have enough of it. We don't buy fertilizer for our garden, we just use horse/goat/chicken manure.

Crimson Sweet is what we grew last year, but we are in zone 8. Our plants got enormous, some of the vines were pushing 20 feet long! I don't know if this is normal for them or not, but ours all started out with 4-5 melons growing on each plant, then suddenly one would get bigger than the others and the smaller melons would die, leaving each plant to produce 1 melon about 10 pounds. So they took lot of space and water for not much produce...but they were very sweet and juicy. Ours also had a TON of seeds, probably 1000 per melon that I collected for future planting!

I did crimson sweet too. What I did was remove all those excess vines! I would end up with only 1 or 2 good melons per vine, but 100 long vines. Simply remove excess vines and remove the excess melons. Keep only 2-3 melons per vine... they will be larger and ripen faster as well. That's how I did my second round of melons since my first took so long! I'm in Zone 7b.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

cool, i'm doing watermelons this year too but i'm in zone 5. would using pine shavings and hay/straw mixed in with broken down chicken manure be ok with watermelons if worked into the soil?

 

[journey11]

I've planted Crimson Sweet for a couple years now. We really like them. The first couple years I started them directly in the ground soon as the last frost date was past. Last year I started them indoors about 6 weeks prior. Didn't seem to make too big a difference, IME (and I can't figure why :/). They are very sweet and good and we found it hard to believe we could grow a watermelon that good ourselves! What I do is after they set 2 or 3 little melons, I go at the end of the vines with the hoe and keep them chopped back short (so they don't put all their effort into making more vine). You'll get bigger melons if you only let one melon go per vine too. Biggest ones I've gotten were 15lbs. I didn't really add a whole lot of fertilizer/manure to them, but it would probably get you a bigger melon too. Helps to not let the weeds get a stronghold as well. I'm going to do a better job mulching them this year!

 

[ducks4you]

I'd start them indoors, too. I put out a "past it" watermelon for my horses a couple of seasons ago, and it seeded about 25 plants. Unfortunately they started too late to give me more than a handful of ripe watermelons. (It was fun to throw it over the fence and watch the explosion!)
I ALSO gave my horses a pumpkin that FINALLY went bad after being inside, last March. They reseeded about 5 plants in their pasture, :watering then ate all of the fruit from those plants.

 

[obsessed]

I am growing OrangeFlesh Tendersweet this year. I love the yellows over the reds but I never had an orange on!

 

[DawnSuiter]

It's amazing how much I can learn from one simple thread of real discussion verses hours of reading informational articles.

Now, I know why our melons never work out.. we never get any. I will try this method of only allowing 2-3 melons per vine and then trimming the vine so it does not get longer.

We usually have a BIG burst of growth... get 2 or 3 vines... see little tiny melons growing... anxiously await them to get bigger, only they never really do and we've planted H2O-melon for 3 years now and have never gotten to eat one.

 

[journey11]

It's amazing how much I can learn from one simple thread of real discussion verses hours of reading informational articles.

Now, I know why our melons never work out.. we never get any. I will try this method of only allowing 2-3 melons per vine and then trimming the vine so it does not get longer.

We usually have a BIG burst of growth... get 2 or 3 vines... see little tiny melons growing... anxiously await them to get bigger, only they never really do and we've planted H2O-melon for 3 years now and have never gotten to eat one.

I agree--it's quicker to glean from other's experience here most of the time. Hope you'll have better luck with your melons this year! :happy_flower Watermelon are one of those neat things to grow that really make you feel proud of yourself. So many things people have tried to discourage me from growing, said it'd never work around here old) that I tried anyway with good result. If you can get a variety that will fit into your length of growing season, it's always worth a try. I am getting more and more adventurous each season!