Florida Watermelon Harvest

[Music] hey everybody hope everybody said whoop about to fall on some melons i'm in the middle of a watermelon field these aren't our watermelons we don't grow melons we got a good buddy of ours that uh farms that's uh got all these melons so yeah let's check it out if you haven't done already please subscribe to our channel give the video a like let's get started [Music] [Music] oh [Music] lisa's not so hot feels good [Music] all right well i don't know a whole lot about watermelons i know that maybe 95 of all these melons out here are seedless watermelons then you've got very few seeded watermelons the seeded melons are the long oval shaped melons whereas the seedless watermelons are kind of smaller kind of like a basketball melon and i believe they group them into three different classes of melons depending on the size uh years ago we used to grow melons who is this dennis appointment cassidy has a dentist appointment years ago maybe three four years ago we grew watermelons we grew melons for about five years did really good on them some years but toward the end the issue was trying to find the help to gather the melons so we'd make a good crop of melons but then we would struggle to get them out of the field before they rot so we said heck with it we'll just stick with peanuts and cotton so anyways let's mosey on down there there's another crew looks like they got a tractor hooked up to the bus trying to pull them out so we've got a lot of rain over i don't know three to four inches so a little sticky let's head that way i got the bees always hauling some bees for your melons oh lord i better put this thing in four-wheel drive here we go made it we made it all right here we are now you notice i've got the tractor hooked up to the school bus pulling them out uh gathering watermelons is very taxing a lot of physical labor hot sweaty so it makes even matters worse when it's super wet then you're not only are you swimming through the gnats and all that you're also dealing with the wet dirt [Music] so they grow these melons on plastic so you notice here's the plastic and in the middle of the plastic you should have yep your drip tape right here so that uh pretty much drips water and they also pump out liquid fertilizer through it to uh fertilize the melons get them growing better it's really hard to walk in a watermelon field without tripping over melons all right here we are now at the packing shed so the trucks they get loaded in the field and they bring them here sort them put them in boxes and then ship them out so let's go check it out so the buses come in here they back up to this conveyor belt and they go down the line and put them in the boxes [Music] [Music] are you quick [Music] all right everybody well i'm here with uh dustin and mark with d m farms and this is their operation and not only do they farm watermelons they do cotton peanuts corn what else these peas so pretty big operation but i'm going to turn the camera over here and how many acres of melons you guys growing this year about 200 200 acres what about variety what variety melons so most of the seedless we plant our embassy the pollinators we use to go with them mostly 720s but we do have some mostrellas as well okay what would you say 95 is seedless very few seeded melons are sold anymore so we plant the fields solid seedless right and then we go back between every third and fourth seedless plant with a pollinator or a seeded plant all right the seedless watermelon will not pollinate us and another question i thought of as far as the sizes i noticed in the field today looks like they were only picking a certain size of melon if you would talk on that a little bit as far as like what size melon sells and all that so as you know the fourth of july just passed market always gets kind of tight fourth of july yep um well right now we're selling a few 45 count and all the 60 counts we can harvest um the 60 count or the smaller watermelons what that means is for instance this box right here is a 60 count that means there's 60 watermelons in this box okay this box is based on 700 pounds of watermelons in the box you know obviously the palette and being adds weight to that but [Music] 36 count would be the larger seedless they're a little slow right now we're anticipating the market to pick back up a little bit maybe towards first of next week if you have a really good day how many loads do you think you could get how many school bus loads oh shoot we have run 35 40 in a day through here oh wow um you can't always do that you got weather that stops you from doing that or right like right now we're in a sail slump so you don't want to fill up your warehouse with a bunch of product when it's moving slow you know you want to keep your your stock fresh you know that's right so um we can run 30 40 buses a day no problem and load out oh shoot we might load out eight semis a day we might load out with highs 18 or 19 semis in a day okay so it kind of depends yes how everything falls into place let's talk about um planting these melons so what time of the year do you plant the melons so we buy seed in january and send them to the greenhouse okay we use ltf greenhouses they uh they plant them and grow them we'll get delivery of the plants sometime in march our target start dates march 20th weather played a major role in that this time we were yeah several weeks behind gotcha um but our target date to start planting is march 20th and however long it takes to plant 200 acres you know a lot of times labor dictates a lot of how long it takes yeah yeah now is every acre y'all planted under plastic or you got any that's not on black yes every acre is on wide plastic and drip tape irrigation yep and within that drip tape you water the crop and you also can pump fertilizer through the we pump fertilizer every week every week okay we have a crop consultant that checks our watermelons every week actually twice a week yeah and they pull tissue samples every week okay they send them to water's lab we get samples back and we base our pumping schedule on what we find right all right and the last question we mentioned you guys also farm peanuts cotton corn what's the what's it like trying to to navigate not only growing all these melons but also you've got all your row crops is that a struggle to try to manage that that puts it mildly right huge struggle oh yeah because we're still farming over 3 000 row crop acres yeah and then this 200 acres of watermelons is more just the watermelons is more than a full-time job for one person yeah row crop that's at least a full-time job for i'm talking about for us as bosses you know having to oversee this stuff so yeah it is a struggle it's a hard time because we're wide open watermelons we're still planting peanuts and cotton and yeah such as that it's not easy yep somebody's got to do it though right he's got to do it yeah all right well good deal appreciate it uh dustin and mark thanks for letting me come out today and uh go to the watermelon field in the packing shed so uh that's gonna be the end of the video uh jesus loves you keeping the field rose [Music] you

Channel: Field Rows

Views: 167,298

Rating: 4.8217902 out of 5

Keywords: farming, john deere, tractors, florida farmer, field rows, Agricultural, peanut farmer, cotton farmer, watermelon harvest in india, watermelon harvest 2021, watermelon harvesting video, watermelon picking, watermelon picking farm, florida watermelon farm, florida watermelon growing season, florida watermelon production, florida watermelon, watermelon harvesting, watermelon harvest, packing watermelons, watermelon packing shed, watermelon packing line, watermelon conveyor line

Id: hMPG2GqO6ZY

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021