I have a growing conjoined Carolina Cross watermelon
coolvol
12 years ago
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mj58jean
12 years agoRelated Discussions
Watermelon carolina cross #183
Comments (5)scotishred: If you post again, you would be helping yourself, as well as making it much easier to provide you with meaningful advice, if you would specify your location. Depending on where you are located, which more or less determines your spring weather patterns, starting seeds such as sweet corn, or even melons and squash indoors in peat pots may be an unnecessary step that you could eliminate. I am on the southern edge of zone 6b, and always start long-season plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant indoors. This helps to ensure that these late-setting plants have plenty of time to mature a good crop before frost. But I never start corn, squash or melons indoors, since it is just not neccessary when the seeds can be planted in adequately warm soil by the 2nd or 3rd week of May. Direct-seeded plants of these crops pop up quickly, and just as quickly catch up with those seeded indoors. So unless you are located in a northern latitude where there is a real question about whether sweet corn will mature before frost (that would be zone 3 and above), direct seeding might be best for you. Before I direct seed corn I dig a trench about 4 inches deep parallel to the seedrow and place a good amount of nitrogen fertilizer in it. This helps to feed the corn, which is a big nitrogen eater, and ensures that the ears fill out nicely. Beginning growers often assume that the earlier they plant indoor-started plants like melons the better, and end up with big, leggy plants that are difficult to transplant and will never be as healthy and vigorous as direct-seeded plants of identical type. There is no point in setting out heat-loving plants until night-time temperatures are high enough to make them grow quickly, unless you are going to the additional step of using cloches. Also, as a beginning gardener, I would suggest that the Carolina Cross melon you are growing is not a good choice for you. This is a giant melon, used by growers who compete to grow giant vegetables. You don't want to be trying something like this when you are just starting out, especially since this melon requires such a long season to ripen. Instead, I would suggest something like the 10 lb. Sugar Baby, which can ripen in 75 days and produce a better tasting melon than any of the giants. It's also something you can actually use. Having said all that, sweet corn seedlings should look like grass when they emerge. They are grass. Big grass. With ears. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA...See MoreConjoined watermelon
Comments (2)I have a Carolina Cross watermelon growing that is conjoined twins. I will link to a picture. It is only 3 days old but seems healthy and growing.I have named the melon Nuts. Here is a link that might be useful: Bigpumpkins.com dairy photo...See MoreHelp ! Carolina Cross watermelon is plowing the ground
Comments (16)Not sure if you were meaning that you might try thinning to one vine per hill, but that will actualy increase your chance of success. If you want to be extra cautious thin toi two vines per hill, then once you have about 2 feet of growth, just pick the 'healthiest' looking one and simply cut the other off and toss it.(Transplanting is generally a bad idea with most cukerbits at this point.) With limited space, you could try trellising too. And yep, you can do it with watermelons, even big ones, if you stay on top of it during the critical fruit setting period. There are a few options there. A good one is to take some hog or cattle fencing and cut it into 8-10 foot sections. The make some "half cylinders" kinda like little bridges out of them. Train the vine up into this "trellis". The important thing is to begin carefully training the vines with decent fruit sets back to the ground beneath the trelllis. What this does is it allows the foliage of the melon plant itself to shade the fruits very nicely beneath the trellis. You don't need a fram for the wire trellis in this situation, as this cattle of hog fence has enough 'body" to support the foliage anyway. YOu can also go to a "full trellising" situation if you build a strong trellis and use slings. I once had a pumpkin trellised to almost 12 feet in the air, with 20-40 pound pumpkins hanging in slings. It was quite a conversation starter, heheh. Anyway, the first 'system' mentioned works very well, and will allow you to pretty much grow 3 vines in the space you would normally only be able to get 2, and even get better results with bigger fruits if executed correctly....See MoreCarolina Cross Harvested: 70 pounds
Comments (5)Harvested the second one this past weekend. It was alot nicer shaped and pretty heavy too, although I can't seem to find our bathroom scale to be able to weigh it. It's definitely less than 100 pounds though since I can (barely) lift it myself. Interestingly, upon cutting open the first one today, it was largely hollow inside. It had a void about the size of a 15 pound watermelon inside. Not sure why, but this certainly explains why it weighed less than I expected. It actually tastes pretty good, as good as any supermarket watermelon. I'll probably be making some seeds available to anyone who wants some. Wayne...See Morecoolvol
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8 years agoMokinu
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