One Simple Trick to Grow Lots of Melons

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Melons are a favorite summer time garden treat. It’s easy to grow melons and there are even small varieties that are perfect for small home gardens. However, often times we can have healthy plants and lots of flowers but very few fruit that develop. It is so frustrating to see this happen! This one simple trick will help you grow lots of melons.

 

 

Healthy Plants = Healthy Fruit

But first…before we get to pollination issues. We need to make sure we actually have healthy plants that can make lots of flowers.

Melons are heavy feeders. They need a lot of nutrients to produce the fruit. The biggest mistake new gardeners make is not fertilizing their plants throughout the season. Without proper soil nutrients, the plants won’t grow, flower, or develop fruit. Here are some quick tips grow healthy melon plants so that they’ll produce many flowers and nutrient dense fruit.

Prepare your garden by adding a 2-3” layer of compost. If you don’t make your own, choose compost with the OMRI Listed label which ensures the compost meets organic standards. Most store bought composts (both organic and conventional) have added fertilizer. If you’re planting light feeders such as lettuces, you won’t need more fertilizer at planting. If you’re planting heavy feeders such melons, add in more organic fertilizer.

Add Minerals such as Azomite or Greensand. I add this in when I amend the garden with compost, but you can also add it in each transplant hole. I alternate between Azomite and Greensand. Both are packed with trace minerals, but each offer the garden something different so I switch between them each year.

Choose an All Purpose organic fertilizer by looking for the OMRI Listed label.  Down to Earth and E.B. Stone are both high quality organic fertilizers. If you can’t find something that is OMRI Listed, choose a product with plant and animal ingredients such as kelp meal, fish meal, bat guano, feather meal, bone meal, and blood meal.

Always follow label instructions – even with organics. The label will tell you how much and how often to apply it. Direct sowing is recommended for melons but since these are big plants, you don’t need to spread fertilizer all over the bed as you would if you were growing carrots. Wait until the seedling has 2 sets of true leaves and then fertilize with your organic fertilizer. If you’re using transplants, add the fertilizer to the planting hole and mix well.

Continue to fertilize throughout the season. This is where most new gardeners stop. The label will tell you how often to apply it. It’s really important to continue these applications especially with heavy feeding crops such as melons. As you continue to build up the health of your soil, you will be able to cut down on fertilizer, but until then don’t forget this important step for growing lots of melons!

Now that you’re on your way to growing healthy nutrient dense food, let’s talk about what you can do if you have lots of melon flowers but very little fruit.

 

One Simple Trick for Growing Melons

Did you know that melons (and squash and cucumbers) have separate male and female flowers? These are called imperfect flowers because they only have one sexual reproductive organ per flower. Perfect flowers have both within one flower. Fruit set issues with plants with imperfect flowers is usually due to a lack of pollinators. Bees aren’t the only pollinators in our gardens, but there’s a good chance that you’ll have fruit set issues if you don’t see many bees around.

 

 

Male or Female Flowers?

The easiest way to tell which is which is by looking behind the actual flower. There are other differences but for beginner gardeners this is the easiest way to tell them apart. The female flower has a small immature fruit right behind the flower.  The male flower just has a regular stem. Check out the watermelon flowers below. The differences are very noticeable because of the long stems.

 

 

 

 

Now, take a look at the cantaloupe flowers below. The differences can be a little harder to see because the stems are short.

 

If the female flower gets pollinated, the fruit will continue to develop. If it doesn’t get pollinated, the fruit will shrivel up and die. That’s a sign that you don’t have enough pollinators in the garden. For the pollination of imperfect flowers, the pollen of the male flower needs to end up on the stigma of the female flower. If the bees and other pollinators aren’t numerous enough to do the job, you can step in and lend a hand…or a paintbrush. Or better yet, a kid with a paintbrush. This a perfect job for a kid!

Related Post – Gardening with Kids – Child Led Activities

 

Fancy Tools (or not)

You know those small paintbrushes that come with kid’s craft type kits or watercolor paints? Grab one of those and head out to the garden. Swirl it around inside a male flower. See that gold sparkly stuff? That’s the pollen. Now, swirl it around inside a female flower. Just to be extra sure, take pollen from 2-3 male flowers for each female flower.

Melon flowers usually stay open for more than one day (unlike squash), so I don’t like to remove the flower from the plant. I (or my kids) try to hand pollinate every day or two, if bees are scarce, so I may come back to those same male flowers another day. You can pick them off once their yellow color starts to fade.

 

Results of Pollination

If pollination is successful (by you, the kids, or preferably the bees), the fruit will continue to develop. Then start counting down to the most amazing melons you’ve ever tasted! They will blow away everything you’ve ever bought in a store! Check out a previous post about the monster cantaloupe vine that took over my whole bed at our community garden.

 

 

 

Related Posts

Melon Success!

Watermelon Tears

Seed Starting Experiment with Vines

Seedling Experiment Results

Happy Gardening!

 

 

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