Grow The Most INCREDIBLE WATERMELON PLANTS: 5 Expert Tips!

what's grown on gardeners it's Sunday May 12th and the warm weather is here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina and that means it is melon season and on today's video I'm going to share with you five tips to grow the most amazing watermelons of your life if you're new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden an awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated watermelons are def Def itely One of the more challenging annual vegetables to grow they have very large fruits that require a lot of attention and food they have long vines that need a lot of space and they can be quite susceptible to different pests and diseases so it is really important to understand the basics if you're new at growing watermelons before you dive in head first however just like anything else once you learn the basics it's like tying your shoes and it becomes really easy to be successful tip number one is to grow appropriately sized melons for your SK skill level and for your space now watermelons come in all different sizes you can get them as small as individual size or you can get them that grow to be 50 to 100 lb or more and generally speaking the larger the watermelon the more skill and the more time it takes to grow as well as the more space you need that's because in order for a watermelon to get very large it demands not only a lot of space but it needs a lot of time and a lot of fertilizer and sunshine so somebody that is growing monsterized watermelons is going to have to have a lot of skill and time and talent to keep those Vines very healthy and producing that large watermelon for the amount of time it takes so if you are new to growing watermelons I generally recommend that you grow smaller sized watermelon something like a sugar baby is a really good starter watermelon because they usually only get to be about 8 to 10 lbs or so you can even look up all kinds of personal siiz melons the smaller they are not only the less space do you need to grow them but the faster they will become mature so you don't have to worry about keeping the vines free of pests and diseases for as long so if you're new to growing watermelons Maybe This Year isn't the time to try and break the 4 clubs record start small grow smaller watermelons and as you get more and more skilled you will gain the confidence that is necessary to grow the larger ones tip number two is something I have recently discovered and this has become a game Cher for me and I think it will be for other gardeners that live in southern climates with strong sun and a longer growing season where it is easy to grow watermelons in terms of how many warm weather days that you have and that is to put your watermelon bed in the shade and then plant the actual plants themselves in the shade but let the vines crawl out into the sun watermelon plants need a long growing season full of very warm weather in order to appropriately mature and ripen their fruit however a problem that we run into in the south is eventually our days get too hot for the vines because remember these are Vining plants they are not meant to grow out in full sun they are an understory plant in their native habitat it's just where they come from they don't deal with frost and freeze so they have all the time in the world to develop and ripen their fruits we as humans have saved seed over countless generations and we have bred these monster fruits that need a ton of solar energy in order to ripen their fruit so as a result we usually tag these plants to be full sun but because it gets so hot down south and the UV index is so strong eventually even watermelon will succumb to extreme UV so what I have found is the best thing to do is to plant a garden bed in shade I have this tucked away in the shade of my fig tree and my pmen tree and then I am going to plant these watermelons so the actual plants themselves are in shade and in relatively cool soil then the vines will Meander and crawl out into the sun on my weed barrier so what I will have is the core of the plants the root structure will be in nice cool Shady soil so the plants won't be stressed out but then the vines are going to be able to crawl out into full sun to get all of the energy from the Sun via photosynthesis that they need and what you will have is incredibly happy watermelon plants because the core of the plant the roots are nice and cool and not stressed out but the vines can crawl and Meander and get all of the Sun that they need in order to ripen the fruit now this isn't something that you're going to want to do if it's challenging for you to grow uh watermelons in your climate because your Summers aren't long or hot enough and it's already difficult enough just to get ripe fruit obviously if that is you you want to plant these out in full sun but if you're in the South or you're in the desert or you're in Southern California parts of Texas Florida things like that where the heat becomes too much for the vines this is a really great hack in order to have healthy low stress plants that still produce like Gang Busters if you have a season that is warm enough to accommodate a part-shade planting like this I have been employing this strategy for several years now and it works absolutely brilliantly so just to give you an overview of my yard here is where I'm going to plant the Watermelons they will be safely under the shade of that pmen tree and this fig tree and then the vines will Meander out into this black weed barrier right here where they can stretch out indefinitely you can see that we get full sun just beating down on this entire area so the vines will be able to get all of the energy they need for the Sun but the plants are going to stay nice and cool and protected under shade tip number three is to heavily fertilize your watermelon plants I cannot stress this enough it should come as no surprise to anyone that watermelons are some of the heaviest feeders in our entire annual vegetable garden I mean in in order to produce those monster fruits the biggest fruits in our garden they are obviously going to demand the most food so in order to have healthy vigorous vines that are productive and make large fruits you are going to have to feed them like Olympic athletes the more you give them the more they will give back it is very difficult to overfeed watermelons but it's really easy to underfeed them I have a two-step watermelon fertilizing routine that has both a granular component and a water soluble component I do this every 10 to 14 days that is the frequency that I think you should fertilize your watermelon Vines and this is how I do it my granular fertilizing component consists of three different products two of which are mandatory one of which are optional the base of it is always an organic allpurpose fertilizer I'm using this espoma plant tone which is 533 NPK but anything that is roughly around 555 will do as long as it is an all-purpose fertilizer that is organic and has all of NPK represented and the numbers are fairly close together that is good enough you don't have to use this exact brand then I have a bone meal component which is a big source of phosphorus and calcium and you really need that to support blooming and fruit development as well as producing strong roots then I also use crab and lobster shell meal this is optional the reason why I plant my annual vegetable vegetables with crab and lobster shell meal is it has a component called kiten and kiten inhibits nematode growth and we have root knot nematodes in our very sandy soil that have been a problem for me in the past so I incorporate this into my fertilizer because I try to chase away the nematodes as best as possible if you don't have an issue with nematodes in your soil you do not need to use this although it does have a lot of nutrients and it's quite good for your plants now if you want to follow my blend I use two parts of the organic fertilizer one part bone meal and one part crab and lobster shell meal so if you want to make four cups of fertilizer it would be two cups of the allpurpose one cup of bone meal and one cup of crab and lobster shell meal and then you mix it all up into your own blend if you're not going to use the crab and lobster shell meal use a ratio of two parts allpurpose fertilizer to one part bone meal if you find bone meal too expensive you may be able to go as high as three parts of the allpurpose to one part of the bone meal and to make things easy for you I will place direct links to all of these fertilizers down in the video description if you're interested when you mix all of the granular organic fertilizers together you get a mix that looks something like this now for the controversial part of this video the water soluble fertilizers in addition to the granular Organics that I use I also supplement my watermelon with water soluble fertilizers because as I said they are extremely heavy heavy feeders and we're planting the plants together in Fairly high density I believe it is just more Demand on nutrition than the soil itself can provide so I supplement the organic fertilizers with water soluble now the not controversial part is Alaska fish fertilizer I always add a watering can with about 2 to 3 tablespoons per gallon of Alaska fish fertilizer to my plants every 10 to 14 days alongside the granular Organics but here is the controversial part fish fertilizer is a 511 NPK so it is very high in nitrogen but not much else so I need to give them additional phosphorus and pottassium as well and for that I add a tablespoon per gallon of Jack's 202020 this is JR Peters 202020 it's basically the same thing this is a not organic water soluble fertilizer it's very similar to a fertilizer that begins with an m and ends in erle grow that I would never recommend that anybody uses but I think this is a much higher quality product but if I had to compare it to a very common off-the-shelf water soluable fertilizer it would look like the one that has a big tomato on the front of the package now the way I view water soluble fertilizers like these is as follows I view these more like a multivitamin or a supplement for weightlifting in order to supplement an already healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle to make you e even stronger so when the soil and Organics alone can't provide enough for these mutant giant fruits that are planted really close together that are usually human created we've bred these things over countless Generations well this is like giving a a uh a multivitamin or some type of weightlifting supplement or protein powder after an already really healthy meal and a healthy lifestyle so I do not personally believe that using this one to two times a month which is really all you need to do is going to harm your soil or your plants in any way but it will make them grow stronger and more productive and you will likely get a better Harvest so when it comes to growing watermelon and other super heavy feeders I do find this dramatically helps to use every 10 to 14 days or so twice a month is probably enough for most Growers and again if you're interested in the water soluble fertilizers I'll Place links down to them in the video description for your convenience as well now this raised garden bed is 8 square ft I'm going to plant four watermelon plants total in here I have two watermelon plants here that have both male and female flowers and then towards the left I have some seedless varieties that I'm going to interplant later so I'm going to give each watermelon 2 square fet of growing space I'm going to space the plants one foot apart and then they will have 2 feet back where they basically have uninterrupted space to grow in so because we are planting in such high density we need to feed them well so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to Dig Two planting holes and I'm going to dig them to the same depth as the root ball we are not going to bury these deeply or anything like that we want to bury them so basically the top of this potting mix is the top of the garden soil and this is a brand new garden bed I just filled it with 50% top soil 50% calor compost so there should already be a lot of nutrients in this soil so now that the planting holes are dug we're just going to take the pot and make sure they're at the right depth they're a little too deep that's good right there so I'm going to take my fertilizer blend and one of these scoopers is 1 and 1/2 tablespoons I'm going to give a rounded scoop which will be 2 tablespoon of fertilizer in each planting hole then I'm going to turn my plants upside down squeeze the plastic so it gently Falls away never pull the transplants out you could tear uh The Roots apart or break the plants and then I'm going to orient the vines in the way that I want them to grow the weed barrier is out that way I want them to grow in that direction uh we're going to first take our plant label so we don't get them mixed up we're going to do the same thing here Orient the vines in the direction that we want them to grow then we are going to back fill them so now that the plants have been backfilled and tamped down I'm going to take a scooper and put one tablesp spoon or half a scooper around each plant this is called top dressing and we are going to do this every 10 to 14 days except in 10 to 14 days we're going to give them a full two tablespoons so each plant will get two tablespoons every 10 to 14 days as a top dressing that is the schedule that you will work on in order to keep these plants healthy now let's get the water cable component together to water these in and to do that we are going to take a watering can this is a 1 and 1/2 gallon watering can and I'm going to put in 1 and 1/2 tablespoon of that Jax 202020 that's a concentration of 1 tbspoon per gallon then I am going to take the fish emolion mix it up really well and add two to three tablespoons per gallon so this is since this is a gallon and a half watering can we're going to do more like 3 to four and then I'm going to turn on my rain barrels and I'm going to fill it with water and make sure to mix very very well it is very important that all of your water soluble fertilizers have been mixed thoroughly so they have dissolved and incorporated into the watering can now we will apply the water soluble fertilizer it is very important that when fertilizing your plants you place the granular organic fertilizers first because they are not immediately bioavailable to the plants they have to be broken down by the microbes in the soil and the granular fertilizers need to be wet in order to start the decomposition process so always put the dry Organics down first then you will water them in and that will wet them down and kick off the decomposition process and again we are going to do this exact process every 10 to 14 days now when it comes to water soluble fertilizers there's enough fertilizer here for about six plants you can fertilize about four plants this size and this intensity with the gallon so I'm only going to give them that much and the rest I'm going to put on my cuc cumbers because I have plenty left over tip number four to grow amazing watermelon is something that I discovered completely by accident four years ago and that is to let the plants grow their vines on top of this black weed barrier now 6 years ago I tried growing my watermelon on a big hill and I let the VIN sprawl out in the grass that was a nightmare cucumber beetles decimated and killed all of my plants then I tried planting it out in my garden and I had a similar situation where I had issues with beetles and other pests that not only damaged The Vines but they damaged the fruit however the fourth year I moved them into containers out in this weed barrier area when I just moved into this house and there was a lot less growing on here and what I found was the vine stayed completely free of insect pests all season I don't know exactly what it is about this weed barrier but insect pests just don't like Crossing it maybe it's because the weed barrier attracts additional Heat and the microclimate is just too warm for them even though the weed barrier itself does not get hot it does make the general surrounding area 3 to 5° warmer which I have tested with a wireless thermometer so maybe the additional heat repels them maybe it's something to do with the synthetic material that they just don't like walking or hopping across I can't really explain it but every year since I have been growing my watermelon vines on this weed barrier allowing them to sprawl and crawl across and I have had absolutely no issues with pests it's been so wonderful I haven't even had to spray them so my raised bed is right here I'm going to let the vines grow over this entire area and just for clarity sake there's no function to this cattle panel trellis that I have lying down here uh the vines are going to sprawl across them I want to do something with these but I just have nowhere else to store them this is just where they've been sitting for 2 years because I haven't got my big Mastermind project off the ground you don't need anything for them to Trellis around the ground on just let them sprawl out on the weed barrier and it will seriously eliminate the pests now will it eliminate 100% of them I don't know the answer to that question and it may vary based on what the unique insect pests are in your given climate but I can say right here I've had at least a 90% reduction I can't say it's eliminated every single one but I can say I haven't had any insect pests kill my vines or damage the watermelon fruits themselves thanks to the weed barrier it's the only credit I can give and not to sound like a broken record but if you are interested in this weed barrier I will place links for it down in the video description and my fifth and final tip to grow amazing incredible watermelon better than you ever have before is to mulch your watermelon Vines but only after the plants have become well established well why is that watermelons are extremely tropical they need nights well above 50° F in order to thrive they also need warm soil temperatures and they are very susceptible to rot when they are young they do not like persistently moist conditions and a mistake that I've made in the past is to immediately mulch my watermelon plants right after planting the reason why you don't want to do that the moment after you plant is because the point of mulch is to retain moisture in the soil and also to cool the plant down so if I place a mulch on top of the Watermelons right now it is going to keep the soil wetter than it should be and cooler than it should be I want this nice black garden soil to actually get nice and hot from the sun right now to kind of give these Vines a boost because it's early May and it's just not that persistently hot right now and it's cooling off nicely at night I want the soil to be warmer and mulch would actually work against me but in about 3 weeks or so it's going to start getting hot once June approaches at least where I live and when it starts getting hot then the plants will benefit from cooler soil and The Roots will be nice and much more well established so they will be consistently drying out the soil and I will need the more even moisture retention so in about 3 weeks I will mulch this with a natural mulch what kind of mulch will I use it doesn't matter what kind of mulch you use as long as it is a natural mulch that will break down and add or organic matter to the soil do not use dyed mulch because it's usually lumber products like 2x4s pallets or plywood that they grind up and dye to make it look like real hardwood but it's not it's mostly construction scraps do not use rubber mulch because it's made out of tires and other yucky things that you don't want in your garden and don't use Stone mulch because Stone mulch doesn't Decay it won't add anything to your soil any kind of natural mulch will do cypress mulch cedar mulch shredded hardwood bark mulch pine bark nuggets you can go rake up leaves or pine needles from the forest and you can use that if you have a nice lawn that is free from herbicides and weed seed tops and it's just fresh cut green grass and nothing else you can use that you can use all kinds of free stuff you can go to the county and see if your county offers free mulch it doesn't really matter what you use as long as it is natural and it will break down and that right there are my five tips my five secrets to Growing the most amazing Watermelon Crop of your life I have been incorporating these tips throughout my garden for years now and they have all worked brilliantly and I know that if you smartly incorporate them into your garden they will work for you as well now I know there was a lot of information in this video so if you have any questions please ask them down in the comments section below and I will do my best to address them so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that I used in this video they are all linked Down Below in the video description and all the other products that I use in real life in my garden all of them are all linked down in my Amazon storefront link down in the video description so expand that video description click on the Amazon link and you'll see everything I use in real life and while you're down there check out my spread shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video okay we have skirts steak tacos for Dale's dad we have skirt steak tacos for Dale's mom and we have some unseason skirt steak for Dale and this time we spread the meat out so hopefully Mr Hen pants won't vacuum it all up in one single suck now Dale wait oh he's dripping Dale wait I want to show everyone how good you are he is waiting because he is listening okay Mr drip drool okay slow down Dale slow slow this is a much better attempt than last time okay Dale how about how about we taste it for a second Dale you got the crazy eyes Okay I want him to taste it I want him to taste it okay okay now let's okay yes now Dale I want you to finish all the juice on the bottom of the plate yes yes you see how well trained he is oh my Dale you deserve every bit of that for chasing the bunny out of the yard tonight

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 67,072

Keywords: growing watermelon plants, growing watermelons, growing watermelon, how to grow watermelon, how to grow watermelon plants, grow watermelons, watermelon tips, watermelon plants, watermelon, watermelons, garden, gardening, vegetable garden, fruit trees, fruit tree, organic gardening, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, gardening hacks, garden hacks, edible landscaping, growing, plants, vegetables, how to, diy, millennial gardener, the millennial gardener

Id: 8uzHlOB3ZM4

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2024