Most watermelon vines require considerable space, but you can turn the vines to head off in a unused open direction. I love getting freebee fruits & melons that I didn't plan for. Most people who compost on a free standing pile will get seeds that sprout from the edges where it didn't get hot enough to kill the seeds. Good luck with your compost pile garden and enjoy the bounty. It always seems to me to be the best tasting, probably because nature grew it. The fruit will be ready to pick when the part of the melon that contacts the ground gets a slight yellowish/orange tinge. Lou

Emeo2005, I am not familiar with that common name, either. But I would suggest that if you value your plant, you should remove some of those caterpillars! Caterpillars that damage plants in large numbers can be overpowering and the plant may find it difficult to recover. Unless you are in the business of growing butterflies or moths, I would collect some of those caterpillars and take some pressure off the plant! Leave a couple on there if you want to. If you can give us a better idea of what your plant is, we can help ID the caterpillar. Many tend to be host specific. taylorp, you have the oleander caterpillar on your Desert Rose.

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.

I don't grow watermelons, but sometimes if leaves form when there's been a lot of cloudy weather they will wilt and/or burn when the sun comes out.