Page 14 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2025

Melon and
watermelon
culture
ADRIAN BAGGALEY
My first experience with watermelons
goes way back to the hot Summers of
1975 or six, I don’t remember which of
these years I grew Sugar Baby in my
small greenhouse at home.
This was decades before I grew them
on the one acre plot I use for gardening
nowadays. Both 1975 and 1976 were hot
we had prairie fires and plagues of aphids
and ladybirds, the ladybirds came with
a bite because, eventually there was not
enough prey about. They were so thick
on the ground it was like walking on a
bag of potato crisps. In those days I grew
melons and watermelons on the ground in
the Alton greenhouse, well I tried too. The
melon variety was Sweetheart; I have not
grown a better one since. That was the only
time I succeeded with watermelons, after
that I reasoned that the Summers were
just not hot enough, or so it seemed. It was
2018 before I had another go, I then grew
them in commercial growbags up strings,
effectively I grew them as vines. I found that
growbags extended the season by around
three weeks because of the free and
loose nature of the peat compost, in other
words the roots got away a lot faster than
in soil. Sadly, peat compost commercial
growbags appear to be no more. Looking
back to the seventies, other problems
were glasshouse red spider, over-watering
and poor drainage. Fast forwarding to
2018, I started to solve all three of these
Melon Kajari 14 Simply Vegetables
Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons
problems by growing in the commercial
growbags and by growing the plants as
vines up binder twine. The Growbags
solved the problem of poor drainage and
waterlogging, and the binder twine helped
suppress red spider. Instead of the plants
being on the ground where they readily
get infested with red spider, I wrap the
leaders around the binder twine with knots
every nine inches, or less. The vines are
fastened by natural jute string above a
knot on the binder twine and under a leaf
axil, this prevents the vine slipping down
when loaded up with melons (I generally
go for one melon or Watermelon per plant).
The trick is to spray the vines with water
around once a week; this can be done with
a knapsack sprayer or a hosepipe with an
adjustable nozzle or gun on the end. Red
spider populations explode in hot, arid
conditions, damping down prevents these
population explosions. The whole set up
CWS (Compulsive Watermelon Syndrome)