Finally got melons and watermelons in the ground. Weather still isn’t really optimum for them, but there doesn’t seem to be any better in the forecast for the next 2 weeks. It should be good weather to test their tolerance. It doesn’t look too cool that they wouldn’t germinatate even if it takes longer than normal. We just had a few warmer days with highs of 20C/68F and ground did feel like it had some heat under biofilm. Next days it will get back to cloudier 15C/59F before getting back closer to 20C/68F. With cloudiness the night don’t look as cold as they could be this time of the year with this kind of highs. Still on clear days it’s likely to get under 5C/41F at ground level.
I changed my set up a little this year. I cut the holes perpendicular to the bed to have seedling more spread out and possibly also get more per m2. Last year I had the problem that some lines failed more. When I had a strech sowed from certain seeds it created areas where I didn’t have anything or just weak plants and other part I might have to cull fairly decent plants. So this year I have sowed them in sort of a checkered pattern. For example in watermelons I sowed every third hole with seeds from the last years best plant, every third with mix of seeds from rest of last years producing plants and rest a mix from years past and some more specific that I marked just to see if they make it. From the best plants I didn’t have as many seeds to spare so I sowed them a bit more sparingly (still probably many extras if they do anywhere near as well as last year) and more from the ones I had extras of. If the weather isn’t absolutely horrible, I should have them this year more evenly spaced out and even be able to make late cullings of plants that are too slow to produce. We’ll see. I have quite high hopes concidering how well some of the plants fared last year.
Under cloth I sowed about 5m of kiwanos from @ThomasPicard and some of his watermelons and melons I got last year to give them a little better change. Kiwanos I don’t have high hopes for, but it’s always nice to test something new that shouldn’t grow that well here.
