Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Growing in Greenhouses & Polytunnels => Topic started by: BigPaddy on August 05, 2012, 20:48
-
Hi all. I couldn't find any previous posts on this subject.
I have purchased three unknown grafted melons. I believe that they are a cantaloupe variety. Anyway they are really going in the green house now. I have a few nice fruits starting to grow. I was listening to GWQT last week and Saint Bob said that you should only expect one fruit per plant and remove others to concentrate the energy. So whilst the egg sized fruits I have were half that size two days ago I am wondering if I should remove competitors.
I recall when ordering the plants that there was little in the way of growing advice. Does anyone have experience with these things please?
BP
-
Last year my ungrafted Sweetheart melons grew very strongly and looked as if they were going to set at least a dozen fruits apiece! :ohmy:
The first 5 per plant set and grew, the others aborted, and only 3 of the 5 actually grew to full size.
I've not tried grafted plants but I thought the benefit of the technique was that the plants are more vigorous and produce more fruit than non-grafted types, so I would have thought that 1 per plant was a bit conservative.
If it were me I'd go for 3 per plant in the hope that I'd get at least 1 good one and a couple of bonus fruits, but this is all guesswork of course (and this year they succumbed to the poor conditions without even getting to the flowering stage!) :(
-
for what it's worth, the instructions on the melon seeds I tried to grow this year were to limit each plant to 3 fruit. There were also some complicated instructions about pinching the growing tip out twice to encourage a third "branch" which is where the fruit actually grow.
Having said that, after 3 months, the three seedlings which grew (from 5 seeds) were only about 3" high, so I gave up on them!
-
I tried melon from seed for the first time this year, in my polytunnel. I did two plants but chucked one out a while back because it never grew, just sat there looking miserable. The other one did finally start growing strongly a few weeks back, but there's no way I'm going to get any fruit from it. It's a decent size now and has flowers but not a single fruit. Next year I'll use the space for more tomatoes :)