stunted watermelon plants?
krystine
18 years ago
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mora
18 years agokrystine
18 years agoRelated Discussions
All I planted was watermelon but two different plants came up
Comments (2)Cantaloupe, huh? Wow. I had planted some there last year but it didn't do well. Didn't realize those came back on their own. Well, it's doing a heck of a lot better this year than last. Must have been all that compost I put in this year. Thanks...See Morewatermelon plants huge but no watermelons
Comments (8)First, what area are you in (city,state)? My experience with watermelons is that sometimes they just don't get good cross pollination from bees and such. In our SFG bed, we ended up having to "hand-pollinate", which, you find a female flower (has a small bulb below it), and a male flower (no bulb). Open up both flowers and rub the male flower's pollen center into the femail flower, getting as deep into the flower as you can without hurting it. Yeah, sounds dirty ;o) Also, watermelons require a ton of water, so make sure your soil does not dry out. If you get watermelons, then just before harvest time you want to back off on watering so that the watermelon's sugars concentrate inside (they don't get watered down), and you will have a sweet watermelon. Hope this helps....See Morewatermelon stunted growth
Comments (1)You might have a problem with wireworms in the soil. I get them in some hills of melons that I plant. So this year I cut a few potatoes into pieces about golf ball size, speared them with a pointy stick and put them about 4 or 5 inches into the ground, with part of the stick staying above ground. Then after a couple of days, I dug up the stick+potato. If it has the little orange half-inch long worms poking out of it, then they are likely the problem. Around my watermelon plants I had a "nest". I stopped counting after killing 30 one day. Put more potatoes around the melon plants and the wireworms will go to the potatoes. Dig up the potatoes every few days and kill the worms. Replace the potatoes and repeat. I only did it that once with the melons, but am trying to get rid of them in another raised bed where I couldn't get peas to germinate this year (after 4 tries!) yet they germinated really well last year....See MoreStunted plant, what next?
Comments (2)Give it as much sun as you can and it will reward you, they are resilient....See Moremitanoff
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