Red Plastic vs Black Plastic

[surf4grrl]

weeds are the biggest problem with plastic -otherwise its good for jumpstarting a season of warm crops.

tp://

[surf4grrl]

try again later...

[PaddyMc]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

My father spoke of plugging watermelons to see if they were ripe. Does anyone do that these days?

Carolyn

I would love to be taught how to do that properly. I've tried it, and ended up just making my melons rot!

[Marcus1]

surf4grrl. What kind of bedder and plastic layer do you use ? Also, is your drip tape installed under the surface of the soil or just on top of the soil. Your beds are so nice. especially with the crowned top.
Thank You, Marcus.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by PaddyMc

I would love to be taught how to do that properly. I've tried it, and ended up just making my melons rot!

When I was a kid I don't remember my father growing any watermelons so I never saw him do it but when I moved from Denver back home to take care of my parents I was growing quite a few of them and brought some in for mom and dad to taste and enjoy. To be honest I only got ripe ones maybe 1 out of every three years, but I persisted.

At that point my father had Parkinson's disease and couldn't get out to my growing field, but that's when he told me how he and his friends plugged them.

Here's what I remember.


Take a wide flat sharp knife, he probably used the knives he used to cut cabbage and cauliflower and the like, and make a four way cut on the diagonal, pull out the plug by lifting it out with the tip of the knife and check for ripeness, then put the plug back in and tamp it in hard. He said if you make straight cuts instead of on the diagonal it wouldn't work and rot would start and ruin the whole melon.

That's what I remember.

But I never did it myself on my melons, which weren't the big ones such as you showed on your picture. I do remembner growing Moon and Stars, Cream of Saskatchewan and orange something, if I had my Sandhill catalog near me I could ID them, oh, and the one that Glenn developed himself when he was in Idaho, I think Black Mountain something or other.

Glenn was the curator for Cucurbits for SSE for many years and I got all my melon seeds from him. He still lists lots of them as well as lots of sweet potato slips b/c those are two of his faves.

What he doesn't like that much are tomatoes and yet that seed is his biggest seller, he lists over 400 varieties and sends out seed no older than 2 yo which means lots and lots of growouts every year. But he had help since he's a HS teacher and hired some of his students each year but has to do the seed processing himself since by that time school has started.

What long hours he has since he has to get up at a ridiculous hour to tend to his heirloom birdies before he drives to work.

Glenn and his wife Linda are two of my most favorite folks, for many reasons.

Carolyn

[Salsacharley]

That is a fine lookin melon you have there PaddyMc.

[roerinaci]

Paddy Wow you deserve to be braggy those watermelons are awesome..Thank You for instructions and pics

[peppero]

Good effort; good results. Thanks for the pix.

jon

[clkeiper]

Plugging a watermelon is against the law here. I remember it being done when I was a child, but it is no longer a practice which anyone does here and most people under 40 probably have never even heard of it, here anyway.