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Mouthwatering Melons

Home-grown melons taste superior to bought ones and you only need a cold frame to grow them in. Bob Flowerdew gives some great tips on growing these juicy fruits

There can be few crops that are worth more apiece than melons and watermelons. The home-grown ones are so much better than bought too, yet are not commonly grown in most kitchen gardens. Melons are not difficult to grow, and it’s only a little more effort to get really good ones. Watermelons are more difficult but worth it. First though forget about growing them outdoors, without some sort of cover, cold frame or cloche, I have tried for 25 years and the results have always been pathetic.

However, give them some extra warmth and shelter and suddenly they thrive and crop remarkably easily. How well they crop also depends on factors such as having enough sun and good soil conditions. I also reckon the apparent problems people experience with growing melons is due to inappropriate advice.

The accepted advice is all about how to get uniform crops of moderate-sized fruits. Thus the usual recommendations of nipping out the growing tip after the first four leaves to get four side shoots, each of which is to have a female flower on it pollinated on the same day. This is to get four equal-sized fruits, of saleable size and then to clear the beds. No more fruits or they will all be too small and all must be equal in size because if one gets bigger than the others it may cause them to stop or even abort, so the necessity of starting them off together. Then with good culture all four ripen and are harvested and sold at the same time! But I, and maybe you, don’t sell melons we eat them. And despite our best efforts we are often not as practised or as well provided with the right conditions as professional growers. Thus to aim to have four melons per plant is not what we want and all that advice is redundant.

From the kitchen gardener’s point of view four per plant, if achievable, is not the optimum as it wastes four shells, pith and seeds instead of say two lots or one. And if fewer bigger fruits are produced there is even less waste as the ratio of skin and uneatable rind to flesh is much more favourable with bigger fruits. And of course the strain on the plant is to produce all the seeds not the flesh so aiming for fewer fruits means the plants should be able to swell the remaining ones all the more. And surely you do want to grow really big ones!

There is the danger that if you let the plant make only one shoot this may go on growing without flowering, and 'stopping' does encourage the more productive sideshoots. But don’t stop plants after just four leaves, leave them to grow and 'stop' if no female flowers are being produced after a dozen leaves or so. Very rampant plants may not produce female flowers and perhaps only a few males, so then nip out all the shoot tips and reduce its feeding. If only male flowers appear then the plant is probably too hot, so ventilate more. (Shading may be needed under glass in the very sunniest weather, but not often enough!) When a female flower (there is a wee melon just behind it) appears then pollinate it either with pollen on a brush from a male flower or by removing a male flower (look for flowers with central stalky bits covered in powdery yellow pollen) and dabbing the centre onto the middle of the female flower (aim for the sticky cushion in the middle).

Place a cork mat or wooden board underneath the female flower so that later as the fruit swells it will have something clean, dry and warm to rest upon. Tiles and stones hold the damp so wood is better.

Melons do not like being moved once swelling commences, though it is better to support them than leave them on the soil. Melon plants that are trained off the ground will need their fruit supporting in a net or stocking rather than let them dangle. They get bigger if supported and also stops them dropping off and bursting when ripe.

Ripen on the plant

You see there are few fruits eaten so ripe they drop off but the melon is at its best then. A week or so before ripening little tiny cracks appear round the stalk end as it prepares to fall off, at this point withhold further water except to stop wilting. By now even the very best of the commercial ones would have been picked as they have to travel and if the stalk comes out they rot. But at home we can risk leaving a melon until it is so ripe it drops. It is best then chilled a tad before eating. The perfume will be exquisite, but too powerful for some more used to unripe shop-bought fruits.

But I leap ahead. As you or I are probably happy with a few huge melons and then some small ones maturing over a few weeks instead of all at once.

Thus melons can even be planted and effectively left to ramble, though if by any unlikely chance more than a few fruits set at once and start swelling it helps to thin them out to no more than three.

Unlike cucumbers melons are not worth forcing for very early or late crops, those ripening with plentiful sun are the only ones worth having.

For more great features, see this months issue, available to buy online!

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