Growing Watermelon vertically?

[PunkRotten]

Hi,


So I got ahold of some sugar baby watermelon seeds.
How long do the sugar baby vines get? How high and wide of a trellis would I need to grow these? And what about the weight of the sugar baby melons? Would a stick and string constructed trellis be strong enough to hold these melons?

Thanks in advance.

[MrDeadPlant]

Through a quick search on the net:

Vines grow to 6 feet and set 4-6 melons roughly 10 inches across. Has that unmistakable crisp, mouthwatering, sweet rich flavor. Terrific for home gardens.

Sugar Baby (red flesh, 6 to 10 pounds)

[PunkRotten]

Really nice thanks. What kind of trellis should I use? I was planning on buying big wooden stakes and using twine or maybe even chicken wire. You think it would be strong enough to hold these melons?

[gumbo2176]

Really nice thanks. What kind of trellis should I use? I was planning on buying big wooden stakes and using twine or maybe even chicken wire. You think it would be strong enough to hold these melons?

I grew cantaloupes once on a trellis and was successful. I used my wife's old stockings to make a sling under each fruit to support it by tying it off on the hog wire I used for the mesh. You will likely have to do something similar or risk the weight of the melon damaging the vine.

I'm not a fan of chicken wire for trellises since removing the vine when production is done would be a lot harder than traditional 2 x 3 inch opening hog wire.

[rainbowgardener]

But I doubt twine will be sturdy enough. You really need a pretty heavy duty trellis to support big vines with heavy fruit.

[Fig3825]

This is the trellis I built for my cucumbers. It would be more than substantial for your watermelons...

[img]https://jtnewton.com/Images/Garden/07032011011.jpg[/img]

All 2x4's are pressure treated.

The vertical 2x4's are and are 9' long and are buried 1'-6" into the soil. The beds are 12" high with 10" of soil in them. So the verticals go through the raised beds and about 6" into the ground below. It is very sturdy. The hurricane winds we had a week ago didn't even move it.

The fencing is 2" x 4" grid metal fencing. I laid the fencing on the frame and used screws and washers to clamp it on.

It took me about 2hrs to build and it can be used over and over again.

If you tend your garden often, you can pull the blossoms through to one side and leave all of the leaves on the other making the fruit easy to pick when the time comes. It is also a good place to put hooks and whatnot to hold some of your garden stuffs...to hang buckets and tools.

Unfortunately, my cucumbers caught a nasty cold and died off due to wilt.

I also used the trellis to support my watering system 'guts' which included the timer, backflow preventer, filter and prv... (See below)

[img]https://jtnewton.com/Images/Garden/07312011008.jpg[/img]

Note that the wilting you see in the above picture was due to the heat at the time - it was later that they caught the bacterial wilt from a moderate cucumber beetle infestation.

[ssushsharma]

You can grow watermelons in containers vertically using the trellises. This article https://agsyst.wsu.edu/watermelonphotos.html at Washington State University's website explains about the varieties you can choose. Also, look at this one more informative article https://balconygardenweb.com/growing-wat ... ertically/