Page 12 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2020

A Tale of
Two Watermelons
ADRIAN BAGGALEY
April 14th 2020. The proposed starter
for the evening meal is watermelon. Now let’s go back to April 14th 2019, my diary records ‘potted up water melons’, the diary doesn’t record when I sowed the seed, but I would think possibly two weeks before.
Several watermelon plants were potted up together with cucumbers, and Emir melons. My biggest mistake was taking them out
of the heated propagator. I knew that any watering requires to be done at greenhouse temperature; to get a watering can up to greenhouse temperature can require several days unless the weather is hot. I use the watering can for other plants and seedlings on a daily basis; the result is that the contents of the watering can never make it.
Whilst in the propagator they receive bottom heat and the watering can is filled up in the kitchen from the hot tap, to discontinue this was a fatal mistake. Once potted up the plants were positioned on the greenhouse staging without bottom heat. The supposed water at greenhouse temperature only chilled the roots.
The cucumbers, melons and watermelons died one by one, they went rotten at the roots. In sheer desperation I put them
back in the heated propagator for some intensive care and eventually I was left with four cucumbers, x amount of melons (some seedlings) and four Little Darling watermelon plants.
After all this there was no room in the New Greenhouse for the watermelons anyway, so they were planted up in two 35l tree buckets, two
to a bucket and shoved up against the Kiwiberry.
The planting medium was well rotted turf. The method of suspension is a length of baler twine knotted every four to six inches fastened to the roof and buried in the tree bucket.
I grow cucumbers, melons,
peppers and tomatoes this
way. As the vine grows
up the twine I use a short
length of jute twine to tie a
knot above the knot on the baler twine and another knot under a leaf axil, this prevents the vine slipping down.
The other reason for this is so that I can blast the plants with water to knock off red spider; this is done with a gun on the end of the hosepipe set to soaker.
The last time I grew watermelons was in 1975 or 1976, anyone around then will know that there was droughts and prairie fires.
Now the 64,000 dollar question is, will they set fruit? There was a profusion of flowers, I did nothing, I did what I do with cucumbers, melons and tomatoes, I leave the double doors open either end to let in the bees.
People complain that their tomatoes don’t set fruit; they
should throw open the doors bright and early on nice days. (Most cucumbers don’t require pollinating, it makes them bitter).
The four plants eventually set three fruits one of which stopped growing, several other fruitlets dropped off, but by the end
of summer I had two watermelons. They
are quite heavy, a lot heavier than the cantaloupes and slightly bigger. Red spider can be a big problem and I keep them down
by twice weekly blasting the plants with an hose gun set to ‘soaker ‘the knotted baler twine and the jute twine ties hold the vine in place.
Once knocked off the red spider either have their mouth parts ripped out, or lack the ability to climb back up the plant, or both. I keep my peaches red spider free by the same method, once a week is normally enough; last year as a further trial I hosed down the peaches and apricots ( I don’t normally do the apricots) twice a week
to see if I could influence the soft scale problem, and lo and behold I had virtually no pinhead soft scale in January like I normally have and have to spray for.
It could well be that the scale tend to colonise the apricots and then the crawler stage migrates all over the tunnel. A must try for this season. I digress.
12 Simply Vegetables
The four plants eventually set three fruits one of which stopped growing, several other fruitlets dropped off, but by the end of summer I had two watermelons