Walking through a melon patch to inspect or harvest fruit usually resembles some new slow motion dance or an outdoor version of the game Twister as we carefully turn and step to avoid crushing a vine. With trellised melons the small space beneath the vine is easy to access for weeding or better yet mulching to deter weeds. Once melon vines enter an area weeding can become more difficult. What may have engulfed a 10 to 20 foot wide swath through the garden can be trellised to take up no more than a 3 foot wide “footprint” of garden space.Ī sprawling melon patch means there is a lot more ground to keep weed free. There are many advantages of going vertical with your melon vines. Vertical growing allows almost any gardener to find a space for melons. Unless your garden is large there may not be room for including a traditional melon patch in the summer plan. A single plant of some melons can grow into a sprawling patch 20 feet across. Many gardeners have avoided growing melons because of the space required. There’s a sense of accomplishment in growing it yourself. Let’s face it, for a melon to be put in a field truck, rolled down the belt of a packing house, boxed and trucked across the country it needs to be a little less ripe than one that need only be hand carried from the garden to the back porch! And last but certainly not least, it’s just plain fun to grow your own at home. While a muskmelon will continue to ripen after harvest, sugar content no longer increases after it is detached from the vine. Organic gardeners can avoid using any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers on their melons.įlavor is another reason to grow your own. Home growing allows you to try many new varieties and old heirlooms not available in the supermarket. While melons are readily available in the grocery store there are many reasons to grow your own. Bite into a slice of sweet juicy watermelon on a hot July day, smell the aroma of a vine ripe muskmelon, or savor a sweet honeydew or specialty melon you grew yourself and it’s love at first bite. The results demonstrated that, in order to improve the quality of melon seedlings and their growth after transplanting, a low concentration of PBZ hardening procedure or a low intensity brushing at an early growth stage is recommended.There is nothing like a vine ripened melon picked right from your own garden. Growth and yield from mechanically hardened plants was similar to those from control plants, whereas chemically hardened seedlings sprayed with PBZ produced plants that had a good post-transplant growth and higher fruit yield (25%) compared with to the control. The 40 strokes min -1 mechanical treatment did not show any improvement in the transplant response. The two chemical treatments and the 10 strokes min -1 mechanical treatment at the ECS had the same effect of improving by 70% seedling establishment in comparison to the control. Experiments and evaluations were made on field trials during three consecutive years. Mechanical hardening were performed by brushing the seedlings one minute once a day during 10 days at two intensities: 10 or 40 strokes min -1. Chemical hardening was made by spraying Paclobutrazol (PBZ) at a concentration of 10 or 30 mg L -1. Seedlings of melon were transplanted after being chemically or physically hardened at phenological stages “expanded cotyledon” (ECS) or “first true leaf” (FTLS). The objective of this work was to determine the effect of seedling’s chemical or physical hardening on its re-establishment, growth, development and production after transplanting. saccharinus Naud.) seedlings makes post-planting establishment difficult. CantamuttoĬucumis melo, establishment, stem length and diameter, foliar area, flowers number, yield componentsĮxcessive hypocotyl growth observed in greenhouse-grown melon ( Cucumis melo var. ISHS Acta Horticulturae 898: V International Symposium on Seed, Transplant and Stand Establishment of Horticultural Crops FIELD PERFORMANCE OF MELON SEEDLINGS HARDENED BY BRUSHING OR WITH PACLOBUTRAZOL FIELD PERFORMANCE OF MELON SEEDLINGS HARDENED BY BRUSHING OR WITH PACLOBUTRAZOL
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