I planted 3 watermelon plants a month and a half to two months ago. The sugar baby has had probably 10-15 male flowers and only 3 female flowers. Of the 3 females, I hand pollinated all of them, only one of them is growing (it's bigger than a softball at this point), the other two have died off. The charleston gray I planted has had probably 6-10 male blooms with no female blooms in sight yet. The crimson sweet has had about the same amount of male blooms, also no female blooms. The sugar baby is probably three times as large as the other two plants because it gets a little better sunlight. I don't have any helpful tips for you, just letting you know it's normal.

mingwei: You can grow up to three cantaloupe or watermelon plants from the same hill. These plants are insect pollinated, and can grow male and female blossoms on the same plant. But these vine crops are heat and sunlovers, and the problem in northern locations like MA is lack of same. You can overcome this to some extent by growing melons on black plastic, which draws heat from the sun during the day and conserves it at night. Plastic also holds down weed competition, and prevents evaporation of moisture. I grow all my melons on large sheets of heavy solid black plastic, and never have to water them because there is so little moisture loss to sun evaporation. You should be able to grow a shorter-season watermelon like the 75-day Sugar Baby (about 10 pounds), and there are quite a number of shorter-season cantaloupe varieties. Sugar Baby is an excellent watermelon in every respect, but I would not try growing the big 20-40 pounders in MA. Nor would I try growing melons in any location that is shaded by trees or buildings. The other thing melons require is a highly enriched soil to grow vigorously and produce fruits of any size. You can tell how well a melon plant is going to produce just by looking at the leaves. Big, healthy, dark-green leaves mean good melons. Scraggly, weak plants mean little or nothing. You should be able to direct-seed melons in MA by about mid-May, but no earlier since they will not germinate in cold soil. Or, you can start plants indoors in pots and gain a little time advantage, but not much. So enrich your soil with something like bagged manure, buy a little black plastic, and give it a try. If you get melons, watch the vine tendril closest to the melons for signs of ripeness. When the tendril turns brown, the bottom of the melon should also be yellow, and the melon should have a very low tone (something like a D) when thunked. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I have lots of stuff getting attacked by powdery mildew but so far the squash and zucchini are producing anyway. As for a quick and easy trellis idea. I like to use the cattle panels from tractor supply. You can leave the whole 16' length (they are about 4' wide) and make an arch and secure it with stakes or posts. Or you can cut into sections and stab the pointed ends into the ground and make a sort of fence with it for the plants to climb. I like to take sections of it and zig zag them and tie them together to give them more strength and stability. As to growing pumpkins and watermelons up a trellis, hum. You might have to use some fabric to make hammocks to support the fruit because I doubt the vines could handle that. cantaloupe might be able to support it's own fruit, I'll soon find out since I seem to have had several cantaloupe plants sneak in with my cucumbers and climb the trellises. Here is an example of the arch with a cattle panel Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx

Hi Colleen, Welcome to the forum. When cantaloupes start to enlarge after pollination and then turn yellow/brown and fall off the vine, it often means that they had incomplete pollination. So, keep doing what you are doing to hand-pollinate them, but do a little more of it. Usually, it takes multiple visits from a bee to fully pollinate a cantaloupe, so instead of hand-pollinating it once, try hand-pollinating it 3 or 4 times (during the same pollination session, not several hours or days apart) and, if possible, use pollen from a different male flower each time. If that doesn't work, then something else is going on. Healthy melon plants usually do not have a problem carrying fruit to maturity. Watch your plants carefully for signs of a fungal disease. This is where it gets complicated, because sometimes the fungal diseases show up only on fruit and not on foliage. If you want to be proactive, spray the plants with a fungicide labeled for use on melons before you hand-pollinate them so that any fruit that forms won't be prone to rot after the fruit form and start to enlarge. Good luck, Dawn