Jessica Andromeda
Watermelon’S one of the coolest crops to grow in the summer and the crop that takes up a lot of space a lot of time, a lot of love. So let’s figure out how to not make these mistakes when you’re growing them. This watermelon right here, which i have lovingly named eric because so many of you think my name is eric and i don’t know why that is so comment down below. If you know why, you think of me as eric and not kevin, but this guy right here is one of the biggest watermelons i’ve ever grown, because i’ve never really grown it before, because i’ve never had the space. Those are you long, long-time epic, gardening followers.
You know i used to grow in a small front yard urban garden. If i grew a watermelon, i mean look, how much space this takes up. It would have taken up half my whole garden. I couldn’t have grown almost anything else, so i’ve had success this year. We’Ll see at the end of the video i’m going to cut this open and we’ll see if my money is where my mouth is, and this is actually a delicious watermelon but cultivate that like button – and i will bless you with abundantly juicy watermelon and let’s get Into the video mistake number one that you can make is over watering, which seems classic, but it’s a specific phase of the plant’s life where you can over water, and it’s right about at this point when the watermelon is coming right, it doesn’t need a lot of Water at this point kind of counterintuitive, but what that can do is once it gets to its final size, the size that it’s genetic sort of predetermine it to be.
It’S not going to get much larger, and so, if you’re pumping more water through the plant tissue. It’S going to burst it, you don’t want that. So that’s problem, number one that can really ruin the watermelon completely. But number two is that you can actually dilute the flavor because the more water that’s in the tissue, the less concentrated the sugars are, which means you have a less sweet watermelon hold up. Is this an avocado in my watermelon patch?
No, in fact, what it is is just simply an unpollinated fruit. This happens a lot with different plants that have a male and female flower, sometimes that pollen just doesn’t make it from the male to the female. So there are two ways that you can deal with. This one is manual, one is somewhat automatic. The manual one is just a hand, pollination method, all you’ll do is grab pollen with a toothbrush or a q-tip, something like that from a male flower.
When you see it open and bring it over manually to the female flower and brush it inside that’ll guarantee pollination and then what you can do is what i’ve done here and just put in some pollinator attracting plants like these sunflowers are fantastic, really so many different Plants, we have videos on that here on the channel, but that’ll do it automatically because they’re going to be here buzzing away drinking of the fruit of the sunflower and they will say, hey, look, there’s a male flower, let’s go ahead and pollinate and job is done. Mistake number three has to do with disrespecting the watermelon’s name: water, melon, water, those melons guys you can underwater them. It is certainly possible, they are 90 water and it seems obvious that this would be something to avoid. Nevertheless, what happened to me here in this patch? I underwatered my watermelons and they got off to a slow start.
So there’s a couple things that you can do to mitigate this. Of course, maybe your soil mix is a little bit off. You might need to fix that, but something that we’ve done here at epic gardening is we created mounds, we watered in a mound, so we created like a little hill here and then made a depression and sewed our seeds in that depression and then also mulch the Depression so you’re kind of creating a volcano with a crater at the top and then you’re gon na put five six, seven, eight nine ten watermelon seeds in here and once they germinate you’ll, then cull it down to about three, maybe four and keep that nice and Well, watered: i don’t really feel that there’s a huge need to mulch the entire patch, but i do think mulching the inside of that basin, with some straw or some micro bark, or something like that, can really help keep these well watered, especially early on in their Life, they need a ton of water to throw out all these vines. All these leaves to generate enough energy to create those big honking monsters back there mistake number four: what if you actually do, get some watermelon fruit, but they are small and tiny like these. Well, these ones are actually a small variety, but in your case it might be that you’re letting too many fruit per viner per plant generally speaking, you’re going to want to let maybe two fruit per plant up to four, if they’re a smaller variety.
So for this one here i can let four go because they’re about i mean honestly, they might be just an inch more in diameter than that size at their final size. That’S totally fine for the one that you saw earlier in the video two per plant on that one maximum and then another thing that you might be doing is overcrowding, your actual planting. So watermelon is a plant that you don’t plant one per x feet. You usually plant them in a mound. Like i said two three, maybe four i’d say two or three is a good rule of thumb and then you let them all grow right next to each other, and then you space them out roughly four to six feet per mound.
So it’s a per mound type of planting, but a lot of people will plant five six seven and then just let them all grow per mountain they’re kind of competing with each other and crowding themselves out mistake: number five: what happens if you’re, not even getting any Flour and fruit formation in the first place, there’s three sort of ways that you can go wrong here. First, one which is really common for a beginner gardener is just planting out of season, so watermelons are a quintessential summer crop. They want a long season with a really high amount of sun, eight plus hours of sun per day, so quintessential summer crop don’t think you can kind of squeeze them by in a shoulder season, probably not going to work out too well for you. Another thing is: if the temperatures are too low above 70 degrees fahrenheit, ideally even sometimes in the 80s and low 90s – is actually okay for watermelon, so they can do completely fine. There, too, second reason is if it’s a temperature issue, so above 70 degrees fahrenheit.
That’S what they really prefer: they want to get a little toasty even up above 80 degrees. Fahrenheit is totally fine for them. The third and final reason you might not be getting fruit is because you’re fertilizing in an incorrect manner, specifically if you’re pumping too much nitrogen into the soil. They do need a lot of nitrogen early on when they’re, throwing out all this growth that you see sprawling around here. But i mean look at this honker look at eric here.
Eric needs a lot of other nutrients that are more conducive to flowering and fruiting. Like phosphorus and potassium, and so if you are doing some fertilizing, i would definitely dial your nitrogen back as soon as you start to see, or as soon as you start to know that fruiting and flowering is upon. You mistake: number six, the one you’ve probably been waiting for. How do you know when your delicious voluptuous juicy succulent watermelon is actually ready to harvest and you don’t harvest it too early? You don’t harvest it too late.
I’M going to show you three different ways to know the first one is a classic. You want to give it a thump, a little thumb test. This is good if you’re in a grocery. So let’s do it right now has a bit of a hollow sound. The thump test, one way to know the second way to know, is to look at the difference between the stripes.
Now this is a different style of watermelon different cultivar. The one you see over here is closer to a more classic look. When you see it really shiny, then that’s a good sign. It’S not ripe! Yet when you see it dull and the difference between these tones from dark to light starts to get a little bit more mellow, then it’s a good indicator.
Another way to know is to check what’s called the field spot, so the watermelon is just sitting like this until you decide to move it, and so it’s going to develop a different color on the bottom of it like this, and so when this starts to turn A little bit more yellow and cream, it’s kind of there right now, that’s how you know it’s ripe. If it wasn’t ripe, this would be more of a pure white color. Here’S a fourth bonus tip. Take a look at this watermelon, so you’ve got the stem. That’S connecting to the fruit, you have this little spoon leaf right here, which is all dried up, and then you have this tendril right here next to it that is kind of spiraled and wonky.
When this starts to go full brown. That’S how you know it’s absolutely right, so let’s go ahead and do the moment of truth. The magical cut. Okay, the moment of truth is here: did i make a steak on this watermelon or am i living the dream of dreams by growing? My very first massive watermelon, probably not the best place, to cut this, but i don’t really care.
Let’S go in. Oh i’m, seeing something i like guys, i’m seeing something i really like hold on. Are you ready? Are you ready? Oh yes, look at that.
Okay, we got ta taste test it. We got ta taste test it. Okay. Here we go look at the color. Oh yes, all right sweetness!
Oh, it’s filled warm! That’S so good! That’S actually! And when you grow it yourself. You know you know, cultivate that, like button for delicious juicy sweet watermelon, i’m going to do a full guide at some point in the future right now, i’m going to eat this entire thing and then eat that entire thing and then live my best life.
So i’m going to leave doing that. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I just ate a seed, good luck in the garden and keep on growing, hmm [, Music ]. You