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 Post subject: Organic Watermelon Tips
PostPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:32 pm 
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Location: Odenville,Alabama
I was so disappointed this year in all my melon family crops. A few of my cantaloupes ripened ok, and got fairly big. Almost all my watermelons stayed small and the vines dried up too early. Even my sugar babies didn't do good this year. One of my pumpkin vines did great though this year.

I think most of the problems came from the not too hot summer this year, mixed with too much raining and flooding in my area.

I used plenty of horse manure/sawdust based compost in lasagne style mounds for the melons. I even gave them weekly doses of seaweed and Epsom salt based aerated compost tea recipes also. I even put a little dolomitic limestone and bone meal under each watermelon in the mounds, in order to build up the flowering and fruit development.

I'm going to try harder next year to get bigger, sweeter watermelons and cantaloupes. Now I am just going to study my mistakes I made with melons.

Are there any good organic tips out there for growing various watermelons?

Any organic websites or just good old fashioned wisdom from the experts on this forum?

Thanks for any input you can supply.

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The entire Kingdom of God can be totally explained as an Organic Garden (Mark 4:26)
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2003 7:10 pm 
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Location: parker county, texas
This is the first good year I've had with watermelons, but the grasshoppers wiped out the vines. I just had one melon patch out in the back of our field. What I did was make a 4x4 ft raised bed, added some bone meal, and some black hen brand manure, and some "landscapers mix" I got from HD to help loosen the soil (ours is heavy dark clay). I built a 16x16 ft frame of 2x6 lumber to kind of contain the melon patch, and placed a physical barrier over the weeds (mostly Johnsongrass). My small raised bed was in the center of this patch. I planted four plants and watered them weekly until it was really hot, then two times weekly. I used a weak solution of seaweed extract added to my watering regime every couple of weeks. If it had not been for the hoppers taking over, I would have had a huge crop of Sugar Babies from just those four plants. As it was, I picked about ten melons before the hoppers destroyed the plants. Next year, I will be building a hopper barrier to at least keep them to a minimum. Hope it goes as well next time around.


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 9:23 am 
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Thanks! The cucumber beetles did damage to my vines and flowers this year. I think I'm going to have to get more serious early to fight these pests on melons next year.

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The entire Kingdom of God can be totally explained as an Organic Garden (Mark 4:26)
William Cureton


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 13, 2003 1:04 pm 
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Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 7:31 pm
Posts: 25
Location: Fredericksburg, Tx
:idea: Anybody have any bright ideas on the subject of the
sweetness of melons? I grew a few cantelope for the
first time, and they were not too sweet. Gota have a sweet
melon, or what's the point?
:) amkind2life


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 13, 2003 9:14 pm 
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Location: parker county, texas
I think I read somewhere that watering too much and too often would result in more bland melons, but I'm not certain on this. I tend to underwater anyway, so I've not had this particular problem with cantelopes.


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:53 am 
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Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2003 7:31 pm
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Location: Fredericksburg, Tx
Thanks Dragonfly,
I was not considering the water being the ingredient there,
I was thinking about soil nutrients. I shall have to investigate
further. Hopefully some knowledgable soul will find this
and know exactly what is what.
amkind2life :D


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 9:01 pm 
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Location: parker county, texas
I would tend to think that's it's not the soil nutrients because watermelons and cantelope plants seem to do better in sandy soil, and sand is not well-known for being high in nutrient content. That's just my amateur thoughts on the matter.


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 7:27 am 
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What about Epsom salt? Isn't magnesium sulfate important in teas or in the compost mixed in around melons for better sweetness and taste?

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The entire Kingdom of God can be totally explained as an Organic Garden (Mark 4:26)
William Cureton


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