ripe watermelon
My watermelon vines are drying rapidly due to recent hot weather. My melons are not ripe yet. Will they continue to ripen even with the dry vines.
- Gary350
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 7427
- Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
- Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.
Water melons love hot weather, the hotter it gets the better they like it. It was 102 here in TN 3 weeks ago, it has been 95 to 97 for the past 3 weeks, my melons are doing good. No rain here for about 2 weeks soil is dry and dust. Best melons I ever grew it was 115 degrees in AZ. Melons do not like it wet. If your soil is wet that might be the problem. I keep my melons on cement blocks, brick, patio blocks, flat rocks, in TN. Melons grow deep roots maybe your soil is to hard for your melons to grow deep roots. If the end of your melons are turning black they have BER add lime or wood ash. Do you have photos? What is your geographical location? If you live out west you must water your melons.
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- Greener Thumb
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:19 am
- Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito
Here in AZ I have almost everything I plant in some sort of a crater or in a trench which I fill with water every couple of days by hand until the rains come. ( sometimes I can get by 3 days without watering!) I would say carefully make a crater of earth around the center of each plant (where you planted the seeds; where the roots are) and fill it with water even if you have to carry it down there in a bucket.
Last year I visited the White Mountain Apache reservation in summer, and just while driving down the road saw an Apache man carrying water in a bucket out to his corn which he had planted in small groups with a dam of earth around them. I was thinking, hmm, that's basically the same thing I do except I do use a hose! In NC you probably won't have to do that forever, but just during desperate times!
Last year I visited the White Mountain Apache reservation in summer, and just while driving down the road saw an Apache man carrying water in a bucket out to his corn which he had planted in small groups with a dam of earth around them. I was thinking, hmm, that's basically the same thing I do except I do use a hose! In NC you probably won't have to do that forever, but just during desperate times!