It’s starting to be late season for melons. Usually they get something in their leaves some time in august. This time it seems to be caused by the rains. So far I haven’t seen any evidence that there would be something tolerant to this. There is a little variation in how badly they are affected, but even the best look still quite bad.
There are about 6 plants which have fruits that were pollinated a month ago or close to and will make seeds by all likelyhood. For the others prognosis is not as clear. There are a few maybes and more which are unlikely to make even viable seeds. It’s still not a complete wash. Even in the worst case I’ll have a lot of variance. Also it’s good that melons do make (usually) a lot of seeds. Even around 10 fruits is still plenty of seeds
First to flower decided it only want’s to make one fruit despite many flowers clearly pollinating. Maybe not getting as huge as I thought, but it still looks like it’s closing to 1,5kg mark. White one behind is from the same seeds. Slightly smaller fruits, but there are 3 of them.
This one has little too cracked skin to my liking and but at this stage, and especially this year, anything that makes seeds is welcome. Can choose against this trait once there is more to choose from.
This one made one big fruit fairly fast to a small vine. It wasn’t the best looking in early growth, but speed is the key. Not really hoping mine to make more than 1-3 and instead have more plants to make total yield good.
This one had fairly skinny starts of the melons and only recently they have gotten fatter.
One of the fastest to flower. It didn’t hold the first fruits and is a bit behind, but should have just enough time finish seeds.
This one got accidentally to watermelon side and happend to be one of the best. Only one fruit, possibly because it’s next to a very thick bean bush.
Interesting late developer. Haven’t had anything that would be this thin at the start. With how the leaves look it seems unlikely that it will even make seeds, but one can hope. At least it showsh the possibilities.
Watermelons still look good in their leaves, but that’s about to change sooner or later. They still have more to go than melons and wouldn’t still say they will make viable seeds. Even that would need a couple
of weeks more. Weather forecast doesn’t look too bad for that. There are about 15 fruits that clearly have started to grow, but not all are growing well. Might be that there are still some damage in the roots from early season. I’ll take it even if they make tiny seedy fruits this year and work on them the next years.
Best plant, which was a couple days later to hold fruits as the first, has now clearly overtaken the first to start growing fruit. This one has bigger fruits 2 that are clearly growing and one more tennis ball sized that isn’t growing very well, but it can remain to produce seeds if it just stays. This plant looks like it has some siberian sweet in it, but fruits are even paler green. Also nice to have the yellow type survive. it was one of the best last year and this type had the fastest ripening fruit a couple of years ago.
First to hold fruit is still growing well. It must be 3 weeks from pollination now so it will still get to a good size.
Couple of different skin colours. At least the first looks like one of the ones I got from Spain. Second also is similar, but might be something else.
A few with moons and stars heritage in them. Didn’t direct sow straight from those seeds so this must be from a pollen donor. Fruits aren’t developing very fast; these started just after the bigger fruits. Anything that makes seeds is welcome still.