I’m quite new to the Cantaloupe, Watermelon growing scene. These I thought of as mostly garden luxury items. How else could you describe a fruit crop that only ripens over a 12 day period, is tricky to grow, can’t really be stored or frozen, and takes up needed bed space where other more productive and longer keeping vegetables could be grown.
Over the decades I’d occasionally tried a certain watermelon or muskmelon that was ‘easy’ or ‘highly recommended’ for my area, but they always gave poor results. Technically our cool summers on the Wet Coast are not very good for melon production. Plus, I never knew when they were ripe and they readily succumbed to wilts and viruses resulting in few and small fruits.
Last year that changed. I harvested 9 decent cantaloupes averaging just under 2 lbs each. They tasted great and I learned how to tell when they were ripe. That was 17 lbs from about 22 square feet of bed. This was closer to my average production goal of 1 lb of produce per square foot. Last year my Raspberries only gave me .33 lbs per square foot and my Strawberries gave me .41. So, Nice Melons are always a fun treat that I can now squeeze into my production demands.
Two years ago, I built a new greenhouse. The old one, 8.5 by 10 feet was built of cedar 2 X 2’s mounted onto a base of 4 X 4 inch cedar fence posts. It had lasted many years but a nasty winter (south!) wind had grabbed it and tumbled it up the garden and into my hop pole. The sturdy greenhouse plastic had helped it hold its shape but out in the howling wind I had to quickly slice off the plastic to keep it from blowing away, and it sadly folded like an old lawn chair into a tangle of broken spars and hardware.
My new greenhouse was Bigger – 12 by 15 feet made of 2 X 3’s. It spanned 3 full beds instead of 2 shorter ones and this extra space gave me the idea of trying some cantaloupes. Without any planning I grabbed two varieties of seed from off the local seed rack. They were transplanted in the greenhouse and growing nicely but just as they started to fruit the wilts came and stopped everything. It seemed the humidity was too much for them – I’d been watering the foliage too much, too late in the day and some virus whooshed through the melons turning the vines powdery white.
Last year I made more changes. I chose a different variety that was much more disease resistant. My son TOG (The Organic Grower) gave me some bits of his drip irrigation system to set me up for one bed in the greenhouse. That bed contained the Cucumbers, Peppers and Melons. The melon portion also got some landscape fabric set down on top of the drip lines which helped keep the foliage even dryer. The result was some Very Nice Melons.
This last winter we noticed a bit of a surplus of home canned tomatoes in the pantry and decided to reduce this year’s paste tomato production by half. This would leave even more room in the greenhouse and so I planned to try some Watermelons this year as well.
On April 12th I seeded some Crimson Sweet Watermelon and some more Hannah’s Choice Cantaloupe, (both from Johnny’s Seeds) indoors under lights. Within a couple of weeks they went outside into the greenhouse and continued to thrive in their pots.
I set down the drip lines coming from a header that is attached to a garden hose plugged into a 70 litre garbage can that sits on a small platform outside the greenhouse. I transplanted the 4 melons into the bed, spacing them every 2 feet down the bed with some extra space in the middle separating the two varieties. Between each melon I laid a 2 foot wide piece of fabric across the bed held nicely in place by my homemade coathanger wire staples. That will keep the weeds out and the moisture in. I fill the garbage can every day in the summer and let it slowly drain on its own.
Let’s see if I can get some Nice Watermelons too.
Happy Gardening.
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