No seasoned pro at watermelon growing, Asia Waka. Congratulations to You!

I'd like to get past DW's yellow watermelon suspicion. They seem to be earlier; at least that's the claim for some.

I'll tell you what! I can almost see Blacktail Mountain from where I grew the watermelon variety named for that mountain. I got zero ripe melons that try last year ... and 2014 was a good year for my Galia melons (not a watermelon variety).

I've grown Sugar Baby a few times with so-so results.

Steve

That's a gorgeous melon Asia! Definitely not a "seasoned pro" here, my rule of thumb for growing watermelons here in N. Colorado is "don't." Those guys down on the Arkansas do a good job with cantaloupe and stuff, but I think even they shy away from watermelons lol.

I've had some luck with Sugar Baby before - got a few melons, and not too big. But they tasted good and were fun to have in the garden :) Mine didn't produce this year, though. Got the vine going and it flowered, but no fruit and the vine never got very big. I'll try again next year!

Marj

Yellow Doll, Hollyhill, and Sweet Dakota rose can be grown here without black plastic. I've seen Moon and Stars grown with heavily mulched soil and black plastic. Heard good reviews about the Canadian watermelons too.

Sugar baby does okay. Blacktail mountain did terrible for me 3 years in a row. Perhaps because i bought mal-adapted seed being grown in the south. Regardless i can not recommend Blacktail mountain.

Hey Shule! Have you tried the Saldana version of Crimson Sweet bred in Idaho?! I would think it would be right up your alley! Seems like the website is down, but i found this on waybackmachine https://web.archive.org/web/20160808113056/http://greatideas.icestorm.com/watermelon/

In addition this is what Rick Saldana told me years ago how he grows watermelon in idaho:

[quote]Gradually, through trial and error, I learned the lessons I needed to know in order to grow a great watermelon in a cooler northern climate. Hopefully, you will find this information useful in avoiding many of the mistakes I made along the way.
Follow These Directions If You Plan On Starting Your Seeds Outdoors

Make sure all chance of frost has passed and that the soil has warmed to around 65 degrees. If the soil is cooler than that, it will affect the germination rate of the seeds.

Carefully water your seeds every day and do not allow the ground to dry out. The area around the seed needs to remain moist but not sopping wet.

CAUTION: If the seed has sprouted you will need to be extremely careful. The roots and leaves are easily damaged. If you break off a leaf or tear the seedling's roots, it's as good as dead.

Seedlings are extremely delicate during the first few weeks of life. It doesn't take much to damage or kill them. If a frost nips them at this stage you might as well start over with new seeds. The same thing goes for wind damage or if they are accidentally stepped on. Though it might survive, a plant that was damaged as a seedling will never reach its full potential or bear the fruit it might have otherwise.

Remember: Watermelons need about 3 months of warm to hot weather if you're starting them outdoors.

Follow These Directions If You Plan On Starting Them Indoors

If you live in a Northern State, similar in latitude to Idaho, you will need to start your watermelon plants indoors. Otherwise, you might not have a long enough growing season to bring them to full maturity. I use a seedling mat (under the seedling tray) to provide the warmth they need to really kick-start their growth.

As soon as the seedlings start to sprout their little heads take them off the heating mat and give them a lot of indirect sunlight. If you grow them in too dimly lit an environment they will get long and leggy on you fast, as they struggle to reach for sunlight. Watermelon seedlings should remain fairly short and squatty, ideally they should be no more than 3 - 4 inches tall when you transplant them.

I sow my seeds into the seedling trays about 3 weeks before I plan to harden the plants off. I begin to harden them off once they have 4 or 5 leaves on them.

Consider Hand Pollinating Your Watermelon Plants

If you live in a short season, Northern State climate, you should consider hand pollinating your watermelon plant's flowers. Hand pollination, when done properly, will dramatically increase the number of melons you can grow and will get your plants producing fruit as soon as possible.

Do not water your plants with an overhead sprinkler system. Watermelons prefer to be watered in and around the base of the plant. An effective means of watering them is to use a soaker hose system, a drip watering system or by hand. Watermelons hate being constantly wet because it makes them susceptible to diseases and funguses. (I use a drip system in my garden.)

Grow your watermelons on raised, curved beds covered with (or without) landscape cloth. Watermelons love the heat and as long as they get sufficient moisture they can tolerate temperatures up to 120+ degrees. However, I only recommend using landscape cloth if you live in a Northern State. In the South, landscape cloth would simply get too hot and likely cook your plants. Here in Idaho, during July and August, the cloth gets so hot I cannot kneel on it without getting burned. I grow my watermelons on raised beds because it allows excess moisture to drain away from the plants.

Fertilize your soil a month or more before you plant. Watermelon roots spread out for several feet in every direction from the base of the plant, so fertilizing the entire growing area is a must. (You can also use organic fertilizers if that is your preference.)

Enjoy your watermelons! Rick Saldaña - Burley, Idaho[/quote]

If you can't get his email from waybackmachine let me know i may still have his contact info. I for sure have his address on the original envelope. This was one of the varities i added to my landrace all those years ago. ;)

-Andrew

Oh and for those who don't know i have since stopped planting traditional watermelon varieties in favor of landrace breeding my own adapted to my conditions here in Northern Colorado (where watermelons don't really like to grow). I am having great success and they get better each year. It was originally a collaboration with Joseph Lofthouse, world famous plant breeder now. You can read about his varieties on his website (garden.lofthouse.com). He is able to talk about it better than i am.

And as Shule has mentioned Colorado Red seeded citron melons grow great here. But they don't taste good. One side project of mine id breeding them with watermelons. I already have F1 seed. It will take awhile though on that project.

keen101, I'm working on breeding new watermelons, too, in a semi-landrace fashion, inspired by Joseph Lofthouse's landrace gardening with watermelons, but I'm earlier on in the process than either of you (and probably have a lot less land and resources to work with—I'm in the city limits, for that matter; we just don't have a lawn, and I'm kind of obsessive). I'm doing similar things with okra, tomatoes, muskmelons (although I'm kind of starting fresh with muskmelons, again, this year), peppers, ground cherries, and tomatillos (and I plan to add large-seeded sunflowers and basil to that list, this year; ground cherries and tomatillos aren't a huge priority, this year).

Fortunately, crowding plants isn't a total no-no with that kind of breeding (since it encourages crosses), and fortunately, planting watermelons in close proximity to each other (about 1-2 feet apart) in my particular garden and soil doesn't seem to have dire effects as to fruit size, as long as I don't have more than about three plants per spot (maybe they're more prone to foliar anthracnose, though). Growing muskmelons so close, on the other hand, isn't such a good idea, even if you're doing this sort of breeding, since they don't have serrated leaves to allow light through, and they're more vigorous (that can severely impact the harvest, unless maybe you cage your plants).

That kind of crowding in somewhere like Georgia, in less compact soil, might be much less desirable, though, since the vines would probably grow a whole lot bigger.

So, what I'm doing is growing a number of varieties (not necessarily always a large number), letting them cross with each other freely, saving seeds, growing those I like the most from saved seed, and repeating the process (occasionally adding new varieties). The idea is that through hybridization and acclimatization, I'll eventually get watermelons that are more adapted to my growing conditions, which grow to their full size, and are more as I'd like them to be. Also, the idea is to have a lot of genetic diversity, and to have hybrids of hybrids for increased productivity and vigor.

I have been keeping track of the matriarchal lines on most of my stuff, however (and in some cases, the patriarchal lines)—but I do have plenty of seeds from miscellaneous watermelon varieties, sorted by color, too. I know Joseph doesn't always keep track of the plants' ancestry (so, maybe I gave you the impression that I was just growing them for what they were, rather than because I was doing something like what you guys are doing—though not the same).

There are some other differences between what I'm doing and Joseph Lofthouse's process, though. For instance, I only allow natural cross-pollination. My purpose there is to select for stronger pollen from flowers that the pollinators like (from the varieties with the strongest pollen). With some species of plants, and on some years, I'm only dealing with a handful of varieties, instead of lots of them. So, I might be dealing with 5-20 varieties instead of hundreds. I grow more varieties of tomatoes than anything (I grew about 105 last year), followed by watermelon (I grew about 56 kinds last year). This year I'm downsizing to maybe 60-something tomatoes, and about 15 kinds of watermelon (with most of the watermelon being from saved seed—4 commercial kinds; I'm still planning at least three new kinds in 2019, though).

Watermelon and other melons are really nice for breeding, since the seeds last so long (especially for muskmelons), they're monoecious, etc. My main obstacle with muskmelons is that I want to grow Armenian cucumbers, too—and they can cross. That's not the end of the world (since I like the Armenian cucumber genetics a lot, and wouldn't mind them in other melons, sans the fact that they taste like cucumbers instead of melons). Sugar isn't everything, though, I guess.

My goal with watermelon is to get these traits:

* Large fruit

* Prolific fruits

* Early, full-sized, fully ripe fruit

* Fully-pollinated fruit

* Grows well without having to add lots of stuff to the soil

* Handles light and temperature changes well

* 4+ months of storage life (that's looking like it's a lot easier than I might have guessed)

* Good, and very sweet, rich taste

* Good texture

* Ideal seeds (there are a lot of seed traits, and I like some of them more than others)

* Resistance to local pests/diseases

* Adaptation to clay soil

* Does well with drought and high heat, in a near-desert steppe climate

* Germinates and grows well in cooler temperatues, as well as in high heat

* Pink flesh color

* Ideally the rinds would turn yellow upon ripening, but I don't know if I'm going to go for this trait.

* I'd like to start incorporating grafting into this project, since studies have been done to show that plants actually can obtain heritable traits from the plants they're grafted onto (although I don't believe it's a sure thing that it'll happen; it just can happen—I'm guessing more with mtDNA than regular DNA). I need to learn how to graft first, though. I've read up on it, but I haven't tried it, yet.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand—some of the kinds of watermelons I like to grow are those I breed myself. However, I'm only on F2 to F4 hybrids, now (but I don't know for sure that any of them are beyond F2, yet). My favorite cross, so far (where I know it's crossed), has been a Congo cross (which I haven't mentioned above). It's similar to Congo, but a different rind color, with a slightly different shape—and a different color and size of seeds. The father plant could be Mississippi Cobb Gem or Jubilee, but I'm not sure which (I know by the kind of seeds it has).

My hardiness zone is hard to say. The way they calculate those kind of misrepresents my area if you plant fruit trees. We need to buy plants hardy to zone 4 if we don't want to take any risks—but sites will say my area is zone 5, 6 or even 7.

Well it sounds like we're in very similar boats. I too am in the city if i gave you other impressions. I'm surprised you can fit that many tomatoes in your yard. I'm just in my back yard. I have been planting my watermelon way closer than 1 or two feet. Considering how crowded it has been difficult for watermelons to thrive in my conditions but they are finally adapting. I assume vigerous roots that can compete. I have various different soils in my yard and they do have effects of melons and squash. The fact that the watermelons do so well i think is evidence of the breeding program success. The bonus is higher rate of crossing. The black native bees love my watermelon flowers but usually only visit when i plant corn. They are a pollen loving bee species. I have some photos i could track down of them. I don't hand cross watermelons or tomatoes. I may try with tomatoes, but so far bee only on the wild tomato species.

Some of my Watermelon are frost tolerant already. But i have stopped planting them extra early for now. Once i have better adapted in other traits i can throw huge numbers of seed at frost tolerance and early spring emergence and growth.

I am trying a new variety called 'Kholodok' a russian fellow reccomended. I recognize it as having citron ancestry from its unique rhind pattern. It is also a winter storage watermelon meaning it can store for up to 4 months and gets sweeter with age. Another sign it has citron melon ancestry.

keen101,

> Make sure all chance of frost has passed and that the soil has warmed to around 65 degrees. If the soil is cooler than that, it will affect the germination rate of the seeds.

I noticed that if it's too cool when they're planted, fewer (if any) seeds sprout, even when it warms up afterward (although somehow seeds can overwinter and still sprout), when it comes to direct-seeding anyhow. Germination in my unheated greenhouse is great for most varieties, as long as it's not too low below freezing outside for the nightly lows. Watermelon generally germinates better than just about anything in the greenhouse (same for okra).

I don't start my seeds indoors anymore. I start them in a 6'x5'x3' Strong Camel greenhouse and then transplant them in the spring. My area isn't as cold as most parts of Idaho in the growing season. We get about four months of hot weather (the last part of May, all of June, July, and August, and maybe half of September are generally quite hot and very dry, especially from late June to mid August, sans when we have thunderstorms in early August or so; early May and late September or onward are generally cooler, and sometimes rainy, though; the frost-free growing season is generally from about May 10th to October 10th, but it varies, of course). Things like Armenian cucumbers, and muskmelons, which love the heat do very well here.

I don't have problems germinating watermelons, as long as it's warm enough when I direct-seed them. Direct-seeding can work, here, but I seem to get much better results (as in larger fruit) if the plants are a certain maturity before I transplant them (even if I have to transplant them late).

The plants get plenty of light in the greenhouse. We get a lot of sun in my region, if there's no shade.

Cold and other outdoor conditions can indeed damage young watermelons. I do believe they should probably be transplanted later than tomatoes (although I need to test that in more contexts). I think it's more due to the fact that they're young than that it's cold, though, but cold seems like it's probably a factor, if not a big factor.

Watermelon leaves seem to prefer the kind of light they grew with. If you change that light, it seems to stunt the plant to a degree. This probably isn't going to be a noticeable issue with young plants, since I think young leaves are adaptable, but once they get to a certain size, it seems to be a major issue. I have a hypothesis that removing old leaves (not on young seedlings, but on older plants) can help them quite a bit (and can get around the issues people have with starting watermelons too early, wherein they think it's a taproot issue instead). I plan to test that, this year. I probably won't transplant any watermelons until the end of May or so, this year (in previous years, I tried to do it as soon as possible under milk jugs—I think it's probably a better idea just to wait until milk jugs aren't necessary, even though it seems like you're losing time.

Fortunately, we have lots of pollinators here. Our neighbors have beehives. I don't see many at all on the tomatoes, but they seem to like the Russian Sage, cantaloupes, sunflowers, squash, and stuff. They're often on the watermelon, too.

I don't know that we have issues with few fruits getting pollinated (although we could probably get more), but some watermelons seem to have incomplete pollination, especially if they're first-year watermelons. I mean, the seeds on the blossom end are often not developed. This can result in smaller, less tasty, fruits. Acclimatization seems to help avoid this, whether or not fruits get larger in following years. I'm not sure that it's the fault of the pollinators; it might be something about the climate.

With the exception of Red-seeded Citron and maybe Sugar Baby, I've actually had *much* better results if I water watermelons with an oscillating sprinkler or a shower nozzle than if I just water at the base of the plant. It's interesting how results differ.

My main challenges with watermelon have been these:

* Fruit size tends to be smaller more often

* Spider mites (they're everywhere, I've pretty much resigned myself to adapting the plants to deal with them)

* Foliar anthracnose and/or alternaria (theseseem to go hand in hand with the spider mites)

* Weeds (particularly tall, weedy grasses)

I didn't know you were in more similar circumstances, living in the city limits. I guess I assumed there! Sorry. That's cool.

I planted the tomatoes about a foot apart when I did about 105 varieties in 2017. I didn't cage any of them. I made sure to separate the smaller plants I knew about from those that would smother them (due to lots of smothering experience in 2015 and 2016). I had them in a long strip of land instead of something closer to a square-shaped piece of land as I had done with about a hundred varieties in 2016 spaced somewhat further apart (and the long strip made for a better and easier harvest, I think, since more plants were on the border, without tomatoes on all sides). I had watermelons, muskmelons, okra, and a few other things in the square-shaped piece of land in 2017. I'll probably put at least tomatoes and other stuff there, this year, and watermelons in a new spot that hasn't been gardened on much, if at all, before.

I'm pretty good at making things fit (not just with plants), if I'm allowed to do it. If it were up to me, I'd want to line the western fence in the backyard with 18-gallon moving totes for plant containers, since mostly just weeds grow there anyway. Stuff I've tried growing in the ground directly next to the fence tends to be smaller than usual. I could probably fit 50-60 of them there, all in a line, and lay a drip irrigation hose over them or something. I could grow a lot of peppers. But, that's me dreaming. I'm not the only one who lives here, and I'm not allowed to do whatever I want, even though I've managed to do some pretty interesting (IMO) things.

If I had a big field, and could manage to water it, I'd probably grow tens of thousands of watermelon/muskmelon plants and literally every tomato variety I could find, at least three times (including F2+ hybrids). I'd probably let all the tomatoes reseed, too, as well as plant more, both saved and otherwise, the next year. I really wonder what would have happened had I encouraged all the volunteers these last two years instead of trying to pull them up. They were growing like weeds. I was pulling them up most of the season, last year. They were pretty easy to pull up, but there were lots of them, and they kept coming. I eventually stopped, and some of them set fruit. Letting loads of varieties reseed sounds like it could make for some interesting breeding over time.

If I were just breeding, rather than trying to get a harvest, I'd probably direct-seed a lot of them, too, for some reasons.

keen101

I probably understated the effect of cold on watermelon, but I just want to emphasize that I need to experiment further there before I say much about it.

Saldana Crimson Sweet sounds pretty good. I haven't tried it, yet, but I've read about it. I'll have to look into that some more.

What kind of soil do you have?