Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode .. Watermelons are just… they’re so fun to grow, and they are, I guess, just the icon of a great summer thing to eat. I mean, watermelon in the summer is just an amazing thing, so everyone wants to grow it. But not many people know how to grow it or know how to grow it successfully. Watermelons are more difficult than you would imagine. And so, I would definitely say if you’re a beginning gardener, don’t invest a whole lot of space in trying to grow watermelon. Grow some other stuff that we’ve talked about that is a little easier to grow. Watermelon can be extremely difficult to… to know when it’s ripe. It is extremely difficult to give enough space to grow it adequately.
So, that leads us to the first thing, and that is… the first requirement is a lot of space. Watermelon will take up a good… and I say this is like the least amount of space that I’m going to be giving it, and that is five feet by about 20 feet. So, we’re talking 100 square feet, and we’re gonna plant four plants in that hundred square feet. So, you need about 25 square feet or five feet by five feet per watermelon plant. And so, I’m going to plant four plants in that amount of space. That’s… uh, that’s pretty… that’s pretty space-hogging if you’re asking me. That’s what we like to call a garden hog. So, you definitely need the space first.
The next thing is warm weather. Watermelons absolutely, positively will not do good in cool weather. You need a summer night to be at least in the 70s. If you can’t get your nights in the 70s, then you’re not going to have a good time with watermelons because they require warm temperatures to ripen. Otherwise, you’re going to have those white melons that everyone talks about. It’s just bitter and flavorless. So, it’s really important to have those nice warm nights.
The next rule is really good soil. Watermelon are not like pumpkins. Anywhere on a pumpkin, anywhere the… the leaf node touches the ground, it’s going to send out roots. That’s not the case for watermelon. Watermelon and cantaloupe both require a very loose soil because the root base that they put out is the only root base supporting the plant. With pumpkins and other forms of squash, you have a little bit of forgiveness because all along the… the leaf, anytime there’s a leaf joint to the stem, to the main growing stem, it’s going to send down a little roots. And those roots, all along that stem, kind of add up, and they can really help out the plant to uptake more nutrients, uptake more water. So, it’s really crucial to have that nice loose… fluffy soil that the roots can go in, expand out, so they can take up all the nutrients and water that’s required. We have them growing in just a basic garden soil, but I highly suggest amending your bed, making sure that there’s lots of sand, lots of compost, really well-draining, so that the roots can get a lot of aeration to do what they need to do.
The next thing is when it comes to nutrients, watermelons are extremely heavy nitrogen feeders, a lot like we talked about in the, uh, in the zucchini growing guide. They require a minimum, and I say a minimum of two feedings of blood meal per season. So, what we like to do is we like to give them trifecta and blood meal, just like we do with the zucchinis because we have a lot of fast-acting nitrogen that’s going to give them that boost now and then that slow-release nitrogen later on. So, it’s going to get a whole season of nitrogen. And we typically give them that because they require all that nitrogen to just set the fruit. I mean, you’re talking a 15, 20-pound watermelon; it requires a lot of nutrients to put that out.
The next thing is a lot of water. If you’re not there to water your garden all the time, watermelons might not be something that I recommend growing because of the fact that watermelons are a lot of water. Hence why the part of their name is watermelon. Watermelons are about 90% water. So, when you have something that is that… you know, that rich in water, you really need to… um, be able to give them a lot of water. Otherwise, you’re going to have very dry melons. Oftentimes, that nice, crisp melon that you bite into that just drips juice all down your face, and you just have a big smile on your face… those have been grown with water on a very regular basis. Those are not allowed to dry out at all because what you’re going to find out is if they dry out, if the soil dries out, the melon itself will turn kind of spongy, and you know what I’m talking about, that very nasty melon you bite into and it’s just kind of like biting into a dish sponge. That’s not pleasant in the least, and it’s also very flavorless. So, it’s extremely crucial to have water.
Here in this place that we’re planting, it’s kind of a low ground. We had a hard time growing stuff like beans that have dampening-off issues, but with watermelons, they really like that, a nice, not really wet, but damp, I should say, damp soil, and it stays damp here a lot.
And the very last thing that you’re going to need to know is be prepared to fight powdery mildew because they like that damp environment to grow those huge watermelons. They are definitely prone to powdery mildew. Basically, a defense against powdery mildew. And there’s really nothing that you can do typically if you can have an underground watering system like a drip irrigation or something, that’s better. But the thing is that in our environment here when we’re growing in-ground and it’s a traditional in-ground garden, it’s really difficult to get drip irrigation in here. And so, we just rely on rain and hand watering to do all of that. So, we typically just rely on that combative technique of killing off the powdery mildew using baking soda, and we’ll typically do that every week to just kind of keep it down and keep it at bay.
Oh, the last thing I was going to talk about is maturing dates. I’ve had a lot of people ask for maturing dates. If you do not have a growing season that is at least 150 days, don’t even bother growing watermelons. Watermelons are between 100 to 110 days till ripening,
which means if you get them in the ground at the beginning of the growing season, you’re going to be lucky here in Michigan to get a watermelon by the end of the year, just saying. So, it’s something that’s… it’s a gamble. But if you like gambling, it’s your kind of thing to grow. So, I’m a gambling man. I’m gonna put one in. I’m gonna put four in, actually, and we’re gonna see how we can do. So, hopefully, you all enjoyed this. I’m gonna plant these, and that’s really it. Alright, hey guys, good luck on your watermelon. Let me know in the comments box below what you think if you’d like to try a watermelon. Let me know what kind you’re trying to grow. Also, let me know in the comments box below any plants that you’d like to grow that I have not done a growing guide on yet.
And the last thing is if you’re interested in these growing guides, make sure you check them out. We have a huge playlist of over 18, I think we’re up like 19 growing guides now, and that is over at www.mygardener.com. You can check out the full list of growing guides, and it’s going to hopefully get you on your way to success, to a successful garden. So, I’m going to plant these up. I’ll talk to you guys later.
\[Planting\]
So, the first thing I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna loosen the soil. As you can see, got lots of that really loose soil. It’s so important to have like we talked about. But the next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to basically work a radius. Don’t just plant the plant, work a radius out, and get the radius to be really loose as well, and kind of mound the soil up. You want to plant in a mound because it’s going to allow the plant to be a little bit off the ground while the roots can still stay in that damp soil. It’s going to help kind of combat some of that powdery mildew that we talked about. So, there you go. There’s a little mound. And then we’re going to plant right inside that little mound there.
Now, you can trellis your watermelon if you have a smaller variety like a sugar baby watermelon. Those are pretty reliable to trellis up. However, if you have other things like these are crimson sweets, I would not recommend trellising them just because of the fact that when you trellis a watermelon, you really have to be able to sustain a big melon on that trellis. And oftentimes the trellis either breaks or the melon will become so heavy that the supports will break, and then it crimps the stem, ending up in an unripe melon to be harvested because once the stem crimps, there’s really no saving it.
So, I definitely recommend just growing them on the ground. They’re a whole lot easier. The one exception to that is the sugar baby watermelons because they really only get to be like a personal one to, you know, one pound to a five-pound melon at most I’ve seen. So, it’s really, it’s really a very easy to trellis melon. Anything other than that, though, just stick to the ground.
Alright, so hopefully you learned something new.
