# Time to Reap



## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

Watermelons aren't the easiest thing to grow in Michigan, but man, this first one tastes great! Not like one I picked too early and ended up blowing it up with some ammonium nitrate. But, I watched some YouTube videos and they all said the same thing: watch for the first tendril closest to the melon to dry up. It worked.

Still a few pumpkins out back almost ready. Lost a few to the deer but overall successful with only a few plants. Next year the plan is to expand a bit.


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## youngdon (Mar 10, 2010)

Nice ! As kids we used to grow them in the garden and eat them and tomatoes right out of the garden between baseball games out back.


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

Looking good there Glen, have grown a few hundred pounds of those.


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## azpredatorhunter (Jul 24, 2012)

Nice Mellons Glen...


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## Jonbnks (Jan 21, 2012)

Wish my pumpkins would have grown this year. I have vines everywhere and plenty of blooms but never had any pumpkins. I'm having the same problem with the cantaloupe as well.


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## dwtrees (Mar 5, 2012)

Looks like a great start to me. That antler pumpkin holder is a good idea.


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## sneakygroundbuzzard (Nov 1, 2012)

pumpkins look real nice glen

personaly im not a watermelon eater,but that one does look good

wife loves them,she herself probably eats 6 in the summer

jonbnks: did you see any bees around this year?if not then i would say your plants never got pollenated


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## azpredatorhunter (Jul 24, 2012)

Ha...Short. SGB beat me to the bees, and he's not into mellons...WHAT? Who doesn't like Mellons?


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## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

We had lots of vines, too and no pumpkins or melons. Then, one here, one there and before you knew it, the fruit was showing up, although some will never make it to maturity before frost. Pumpkins, I understand, will only produce 2 or 3 per vine - but they must be pollinated first.

For the pumpkins, we just took some weaker, sandy soil and improved each hill with rich soil and fertilized per recommendations throughout the season. I like the idea of using some poor soil the way we did to at least get something to grow there.

Last fall, I had 160 yards of sand (dug from a pond) dumped into one large hill to be used for my firing range backstop. Pure sand. We even had pumpkins growing on it, but they were smaller. Never could get one to mature, however, because the deer love the hill to romp about and chomped all the pumpkins while at it. We also improved each place where seeds were planted to give them a chance.

I'd still say the bee numbers are down, though, and that is most likely the issue, JB.

Doesn't take much to have a little fun anyway.


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## sneakygroundbuzzard (Nov 1, 2012)

azpredatorhunter said:


> Ha...Short. SGB beat me to the bees, and he's not into mellons...WHAT? Who doesn't like Mellons?


i do to like melons

have had more tham my share of them over the years too

i love big plump juicy mouth watering canteloupes


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

Jonbnks said:


> Wish my pumpkins would have grown this year. I have vines everywhere and plenty of blooms but never had any pumpkins. I'm having the same problem with the cantaloupe as well.


 Did your blooms ( flowers ) stay healthy or die off quickly , were the blooms all male flowers, some seed stock will put out a lot of male flowers but hardly any female flowers which is what you want, do you have a lot of ants around the garden. If you're lacking bee's the big flowering plants can be pollinated by the gardner.


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## Jonbnks (Jan 21, 2012)

At first I thought the problem might be all the chipmunk and squirrels that I had running around, but I've thinned the chipmunk population significantly by taking out 14 of them. The squirrels are to busy now with all the nuts to even look at my garden.

I haven't had problem with ants. I've had plenty of bees and I have watched them coming to the flowers many times. I even tried pollinating some of the flowers myself. I asked a friend of mine to look at my garden, because her garden is huge with many pumpkinds. She said that I'm having a problem with white fungus. It's stressing the plants some where they are flowering a lot. The blooms are not surviving more than a couple days before the flowers fall off.


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

Sounds like powdery mildew, are you using overhead watering, if so, plus cool weather, is a perfect breeding ground for powdery mildew. Aphids can take out flowers real quick and is why I asked if you had an ant problem as they both work together in the garden.


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## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

Hassell's hit it on the head - powdery mildew. We've had the perfect conditions for it and it will completely destroy the plants if left untreated. At first we treated with baking soda mixed with water and then applied some store-bought product. Happy to say it saved the garden. It's probably too late this time around, though.

When it happened last year, I didn't recognize it for what it was and it took over. Not this time.

By the way, all our water comes from overhead - way overhead.


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

If a person is using irrigation than soaker hoses are the way to go for all the vine plants and large leafed ones, getting the water along the root system will help greatly with avoiding powdery mildew as you're not soaking the entire plant. Plus keeping the weeds under better control.


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## glenway (Mar 27, 2011)

Good advice right there. Impossible, as far as the watering on the back 40, but good advice, nonetheless, for areas with a source for water. Our tomatoes were wiped out, too, because of the cool, wet summer.


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## hassell (Feb 9, 2010)

glenway said:


> Good advice right there. Impossible, as far as the watering on the back 40, but good advice, nonetheless, for areas with a source for water. Our tomatoes were wiped out, too, because of the cool, wet summer.


 Hill as much as you can when planting - helps with runoff, retains heat better, run plastic on the rows which will keep the heat in around the plants.


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## Beta (Mar 3, 2014)

We didn't plant any pumpkins, or watermelons but our zucchini did great, but our cucumbers did not. We tried some new varieties so I'm not sure if that was it, or if the bees just ignored the cucumbers for the zucchini blossoms. Had plenty of flowers but not much for picking.


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