Melons Anyone?

[KG Tony]

Anyone intending to grow melons this year?

If you've mastered the art of growing melons, do you have any top tips you would like to share with other members? How about any particular varieties you've had success with?

[Primrose]

Alas my previous attempts in a sunny south facing border, as I have no greenhouse, were unsuccessful so I suspect a greenhouse is really essential. My best effort, lovingly nurtured on a matured patch produced one fruit slightly smaller than a tennis ball!
So over to the experts........!

Ironic though that I can grow cucumbers outdoors in the same area which are so prolific that I end up having to give them away ! I always imagined that they required similar growing conditions.

[Diane]

The only melons I grew were cucamelons. Not quite the same. But they were most prolific.

[robo]

I managed around ten last year I can't remember the name the packet of seeds are down the plot in the shed, they varied in size from tennis ball size to bowling jack size only problem I had was they all turned to mush with in two days of picking ,I had put them in the fridge and had gone away for a few days it was a bit of a job cleaning up

[Westi]

I've grown them, looked great, size good but then cut them & not much red flesh but loads of white inedible flesh inside but hollow when tapped! I'm not giving up I will succeed eventually! Greenhouse is unheated but they grew OK but I think it is not humid enough or covered enough as leaves got scorched so the fruit were not getting enough nutrients to ripen. Just because I can I am trying to grow an edible passionfruit vine over the greenhouse & putting in more full buckets of water not just watering the floor. Will let you know the outcome - obviously!

[poppy123]

A friend grew melons last year. She had done for a few years now and until last year not brilliant. Last year she grew them in barrels of rotted down horse muck in a glasshouse and with the high temps and sun had good crops and they were as big as shop bought ones - delicious, juicy and sweet too! She used Mr Fothergill honey dew melon seeds.

[Primrose]

it seems you really need a greenhouse in this country to grow these but I wonder as they're rather spreading plants whether growing them under large sheets of transparent polythene, perhaps with the corners of the sheet supported on a couple of bricks to allow the air underneath to circulate underneath, would work?

[retropants]

maybe at an angle Primrose?
My mother grew some lovely galia (saved from a supermarket one I believe) melons in the greenhouse at the old house. It was east facing, long and narrow, cobbled together out of old windows and such. There was a peach tree in there also, the biggest peaches I had ever seen, and very sweet and juicy too. This was grown from a sprouted stone found on the compost heap!