# watermelons, zone 5 and clay soil



## Kris in MI (May 30, 2002)

Should I give up? 5 years here, no luck with watermelons, although 'almost' got some last summer despite the cool wet weather (they got to softball size before first frost, but not mature enough to eat). I am improving my soil year to year, better tilth, better fertility. At least now I get vines to grow and melons to start developing, which is more than I got 2-3 years ago.

Does anyone have any luck growing melons in clay soil? (at my old house, same zone, sandy soil, I had great luck with them). 

If you do grow watermelons, what types do you recommend?

TIA


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Watermelons are plants more suited to the Kalahari Dessert than Michigan. In fact, that's where a lot of them are from! There used to be an area in Wisconsin along the Wisconsin River where it was thought that only melons could be grown due to there being almost nothing but sand. Still have 3 or 4 major growers of melons and squash in that area.

But all is not lost if you are willing to do a little extra work. Dig holes at least 2' deep and 3' wide. Replace that soil with equal parts compost, aged manure, and sand. If you don't have any of that readily available free, you can buy all 3. That will give you melons. You can use the same spot next year by digging the core out and replacing it with fresh supply of aged manure. Or, shift 3' and start a fresh hole with same mix. Do that enough years and just think of what a super garden soil you'd have! 

Martin


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

Michigan and melons aren't exactly compatible. I used to have questionable success with Sugar Baby, but not very often. Maybe by transplanting started plants(gently) into compost oases, and getting optimum soil temperatures with lots of hot , sunshiney days, without wilt, you might get lucky. I usually grow some cabbages and pretend they're watermelons........


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

Uh...just down the road from me there is a watermelon processing plant - Michigan watermelons. They do about 20 BUS LOADS of watermelons a day during the harvest season. I am in SOUTHERN Mi, I confess. 

You can try:
Picking your variety - short season only 90 days or less.
Start the plants indoors in peat pots so you dont' disturb the roots when transplanting.
Use black plastic UNDER the plants outside and cover with plastic tunnels over them. I split the top of the tunnels and pin it closed with clothes pins - open it when very hot out. It did not get very hot last year - not one day. That fabric stuff that I can't think of the name for "remay" would also be worth investing in to keep them covered. You will have to uncover for pollination.

And with this - I give you a 70% chance....but someone around here grows LOTs of them. THey use lots of those plastic tunnels!


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## fostermomma (Feb 26, 2007)

I am in Indiana and we have clay soil. We started our seeds inside. And the area that we planted our melons in we dumped a truck load of sand into it and tilled it all up real well and had no problems at all. We do plant them in mounds of dirt. But in other years before we added the sand we had no luck at all with melons.


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## ca2devri (Feb 29, 2008)

I grew melons in Ottawa, Ontario which is probably cooler than SW Michigan. The clay soil is a drawback but you can do it. Here's what I've done that has worked for me (at least for the last 5 years):

- what Martin suggested sounds good but I wouldn't dig out all that soil. I put plenty of compost on top of the ground (4-5 inches) and got a bit of a raised bed going

- clear plastic mulch! This I am convinced is the single biggest reason I was successful. There is a guy by the name of Ken Allen who grows sweet potatoes (and now so do I) in Eastern Ontario and he has done a lot of work to prove that clear plastic mulch is the way to go for soil warming. He has a book on the subject that is worth getting. The thing with melons is they want the soil very warm. In early June it's just not warm enough. I take my extra 4-5 inches of compost and flatten it a bit at the top (so it holds rainwater). I bury a soaker hose or drip irrigation in case it's a dry summer. Then the plastic gets rolled out over the bed and coverd with a bit of soil on the edges. The bed is maybe 5 feet wide by however long you want. This I do about 2-3 weeks before I transplant (about the end of May). Then I cut holes in the plastic and plant the melon transplants in the holes. I cut an X, put the plant in a hole, then a little wet soil on the plastic around the hole to hold it down. I've found a large amount of used greenhouse plastic for free that was going to be thrown out anyway. 

- I start melons 2-3 weeks before I plant them in jiffy pots (they don't like having their roots disturbed). When I plant them out, I put wire hoops and floating row covers over them. That warms them up even more and keeps the cucumber beetles off the. I leave the covers on them until they are flowering well and the bees are out.

- I did the same for watermelons and other melons. I love melons and this has resulted in boatloads for me. It's extra work for sure, but wow you should have tasted the butterscotch melons I grew! You can't buy those anywhere I've ever seen.

- The thing I didn't realize the first couple years is that it wasn't the cool weather that was directly killing my plants. Every August I would have some wonderful plants that would suddenly die over a period of a week without ripening any fruit and this was long before frost was near. What happened is that I would have the transplants out in late may when the soil was cool. The plants are stunned and don't grow at all. To top it off, the cucumber beetles are spreading bacterial wilt throughout the melons, which doesn't kick in in full force until August. The plastic mulch serves to get the plants growing earlier and faster so that they are able to stave off attacks by the beetles. The row covers give them a head start by keeping the beetles off until at least July.

I've given up trying to remove the beetles altogether (BTW: I don't think they bother watermelon as much as other melons). They are ok as long as you have healthy fast growing plants. One other discovery: I read that certain types of squash (like the dark green zucchini) give off more of the scent that attracts cucumber beetles. I have found that if I make sure I plant some zucchini early like the melons and close by, once the zucchini starts flowering, the beetles prefer it and there are many less on my melon plants. I've never had an issue with my quantity of zucchini - the beetles don't seem to put a dent in it.

Keep trying!

Chris


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

One purpose for removing soil down to at least 2' is that one then knows what's down there and assures that there is reasonable drainage. Melons are dessert lovers and seek out their nutrients much deeper than most garden plants. Many of our normal soils are literally skin deep with only the top 6 to 8 inches being somewhat decent. Then it deteriorates from there on downward. I do the same thing with my tomatoes except that half of the soil is returned to the hole after mixing. Tremendous difference when the roots don't have to force their way through the initial silt and clay underlay. 

Martin


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

Callieslamb said:


> Uh...just down the road from me there is a watermelon processing plant - Michigan watermelons. They do about 20 BUS LOADS of watermelons a day .....THey use lots of those plastic tunnels!



I did a Google search. That would probably be Great Lakes Produce & Marketing allied with Kerlikowske Farms. They have about 600 acres in SW Mich of their own and under contract. Also growing regions:
Niles, Michigan
Bainbridge, Georgia
Vincennes, Indiana
South Florida

You would have to mimic their methods for their "Crunchy Red" watermelons, as their pictures show:
Sandy soil, raised beds, black plastic, John Deere equipment.....

Even they admit that it is a slight gamble in their location. Hence, in order to supply melons in the volume to the supermarket chains as they do, they probably hedge their bets by growing in the regions listed above.

As a teenager, I worked for a local farmer who had a fruit market. He grew tomatoes for the early market down in Vincennes, on some very sandy soil. We would ride down in the back of his farm truck overnight, pick tomatoes all day, then range out in the back country to get peaches, cantaloupes(in Indiana we called them mushmelons), and watermelons to fill up the rest of the truck. Vincennes claimed to be the "Watermelon Capital of the World" at that time. There was also a huge farm produce mkt in Indianapolis, also in Benton Harbor, where local fruit farmers could take their produce. I guess those days are gone forever with the big corporations, huh?

And, can you imagine teenagers doing that kind of work today? We had fun though, throwing tomatoes at each other, lobbing melons off the back of the truck, setting the truck's straw on fire smoking cigars....


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