Are those Watermelons?!

[Khei]

But the Flower hasn't bloomed!??

A bit more explaintation..

My mother has entrusted me.. well kinda forced me to grow a mess of Orange Tendersweet Watermelons. (And three Kolb's Gem). Everything's been a rather daunting learning experience for me.

Planted the seeds into peat pellets in one of those lil greenhouse things you can buy for $6 at Wal-mart. Bout 2 weeks later we had sprouts! We were excited.. We put the lil greenhouse outside one day to let them get some good sunlight but the top somehow closed and sadly cooked some of the poor things. Ironicly the heat sure made the rest of the seeds sprout fast.

So they got big enough to transplant so we planted the lil pellet/melon sprouts into larger peat pots with good soil. The lil buggers took off like nobody's business!

So 3 or 4 weeks go by and we got the lil plants into the ground and Everything's been going well.

Couple weeks ago we started getting flowers The main vine is only about 3 1/2 feet long. about 6 days ago we started noticing these lil football shaped growths under the flower buds.

We're rather confused tho because these "watermelons" are under flower buds that haven't even bloomed yet. One of these odd lil things has even dried up and fallen off without growing very big.

Are we doing anything wrong? Is this normal? Are these lil weird things kind a dry run? or are these maybe watermelons that the plant gives up on because they're too close to the roots?

[jal_ut]

Watermelons have both male and female flowers. The male flowers usually appear first. The female flowers follow. Yes the flowers with the football shaped appendage are the female flowers, and that football shaped thing is the ovary. If the flower gets pollinated, it should develop into a melon.

I think what you describe is pretty typical. Often the first flowers don't get pollinated. Give it some time and see if you don't get some melons growing within a week or two.

Melons and squash need insect pollinators. Do you have any bees around? Do you have any flowers that the bees like?

[Khei]

Sorry for the delay.. had alot to do today.

We don't have alot of plants in our yard lol. we have the 'melons, two fruitless mulberries, and a bunch of potted mints.

We got the mint because supposedly they keep ants away. Works for the most part but seems if the ants are desperate enough even the mint doesn't stop them.

We seem to get alot of butterflies who like the 'melon flowers and some small flying bugs.. had one bee visit a couple days ago. That's about all.