Blacktail Mountain Watermelon

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Maw Hawk

Is it possible or advisable to grow melons on the ground amongst you tomato plants? I saw at a farm this past summer that they were letting squash vines sprawl amongst their corn stalks.

MawkHawk,

I wouldn’t advise it, there is a big difference in the way you grow corn and tomatoes.
The Indians did this practice, years ago with squash and corn.

I think the melons would drag the tomatoes down and become a tangled mess.



Feldon and to all others concerned,

That black gumbo soil you have down there is not the best soil to grow melons in.
They get big and they look pretty but they are not sweet, this is due to the fact that the soil holds too much water.
Some of the best melons in the state and elsewhere are grown in sandy or soil that is well drained.
Too much water makes berries and melons tart and or not sweet.
The blackberries that are wild in the hills on one of my places are like eating sugar.
The blackberries that I have picked down by the coast in the black gumbo are nasty, there are millions of them but they aren’t worth feeding to the dogs.
The melons grown in the valley are grown for quantity not quality the same as everything else.
So in short, if you guys are not familiar with growing these crops don’t over water them.
If you are trying to grow them in a rainy loblolly area, it is best to plant them in a raised bed with sandy loam soil that is well drained.
If they get to much water at the early part of their life the plants will produce more vine than melons.
And lay low on the nitrogen.
These aren’t just my opinions they are the opinions of some old timers that have grown them for years in a big way.
One of them grew the best melons in the area around Bend Texas about 40 acres of them.
He and his wife were my Dad’s old school chum’s and the last time I talked to him on melons he was about 75 and still growing melons, that was in 1989.
His wife had her own LARGE garden, ‘they couldn’t agree on how to do things.
I only had a small 1 acre garden.
So you guys do as you please I will grow the way the old-timers taught me. :wink:


Later,

Worth

[feldon30]

I want to grow melons. The garden soil I purchased from the Soil Supermarket [TM] is VERY sandy and loose. My intent for the melons is to create a tall raised bed about 3' x 3' filled with this soil and build a clear plastic canopy over it to keep the ridiculous 4-day rainstorms out of it.

I will spray with Daconil to keep the fungus at bay.

It may not even be worth it to grow watermelons here, I don't know.

[materlvr]

Jeez, guys, now you've got me worried. I moved into newly built house last February, and it has the worst clay soil I've ever seen. I've spent a fortune on Growmulch and steer manure trying to amend it for my maters. Worked well until we had the hottest July in record and my maters cooked.

Now, I'm just amending the area I plan on using for melons with steer manure. I'm not growing winter veggies there.

Our weather is very dry, and in the 90's consistently from about June 15th till mid-September. What would I amend my soil with the make it sandy????????

I REALLY want to grow this melon. By the way, last summer I got great melons at Costco, those small ones two to a net. Man, they were consistently yummy!

[landarc]

Materlvr,
If you have the classic California clay (based on your avatar), there is little you can do to make a clay soil into a sandy loam which is what you want for melons. Typically, our clays consist of very large percentages of clay on the order of 75% to 90% clay. To move to even a clay loam, you would need to amend it to 10% clay at most. Thus, by volume, you are probably looking at importing 10 inches of pure sandy loam to get 12" of clay loam soil. Not really practical.

The answer, and yes, there is a way without bulding structure, is to dig the planting hole out to a diameter of 36" or more and at least 18" deep. Pull the soil out and reserve much of it. Place a circle of perforated drain pipe (the black flexible stuff, 4" diameter, in the bottom, with a riser sticking up to above the surface. Put a layer of pea gravel of coarse sand 4" deep. Backfill the hole with good soil (aforementioned 10 to 15% native backfill/85%-90% import sandy loam) and plant melons in center.

[materlvr]

Landarc,

I dug trenches and threw away the clay soli ( ) and filled the holes with growmulch. I filled up one of those dumpsters for greenwaste, and it was so heavy, I had to call for a special pick up! I've basically tried to give my garden new soil. Hey, I'm a single woman living with 2 other women (daughters)........we don't know how to do drains ! Can i just by sand somewhere and mix it with my growmulch to make my soil lighter? I didn't seem to have a drainage problem with my tomatoes...........BTW, my garden is only about 15 x 20......................

[landarc]

naughty materlvr...the green bin is only for green waste, not heavy clay soil...I also fail to see why your being a woman matters with drainage, if you have kids, you have landscape laborers

Anyway, if the growmulch you are using is the mix of screened aged forest and wood slash and garden clippings that I am familiar with, then you should add some sand, at the least, to create a substrate for the soil amendment (growmulch) to bind with. A good topsoil would be better, as sand is primarily a nutrition free planting environment. It is easier with a little loam to manage soil moisture as well. The fact that you used trenches is probably why drainage was not an issue.

So, yes, for use with any plants, mulch is not sufficient as a singular growing media. Typically, I would specify 6" of soil amendment to a depth of 12" to 18", so the ratio would seem to be about 25% to 30% amendment to 70% to 75% sand or sandy loam.

[Althea]

"What would I amend my soil with the make it sandy???????? "

Sand.

I have read discussions on "another forum" asking this same question, and that is the very best thing to use.

[feldon30]

Spidey sense tingling... Someone will shortly say "no, don't add sand, you'll make bricks!"

[Polar_Lace]

Originally Posted by feldon27

Spidey sense tingling... Someone will shortly say "no, don't add sand, you'll make bricks!"

Yes; Morgan; you are so correct! sand + clay + water = bricks!

I use Horticultural Perlite - The Natural Growing Media For Outdoor Gardening

Horticultural Uses Of Perlite & Vermiculite

Perlite & Vermiculite on the web are available here.

Perlite may cost more than sand; but my crops are worth it! Try finding it at your local Agway.

[feldon30]

What's an Agway?

[Polar_Lace]

agway.com

[Althea]

"Spidey sense tingling... Someone will shortly say "no, don't add sand, you'll make bricks!""

Ha, ha! I'm not going there. Actually, I've never gardened in hard clay. Instead, sand has been the dominant soil type. Our current garden, we moved here two years ago, now has about 6-8 inches of pretty good soil, partially due to the fact that when we moved I brought as much soil from our old garden as possible in order to add some clay to the sand. Beneath our topsoil is pure sand, fill, it looks like the beach. We need to add clay. I'm not sure where to get clay in the quantity we would like. Sand, to add to clay is easy to find, however, and inexpensive.

http://www.oneplan.org/Water/soil-triangle.shtml

[landarc]

The soil triangle, aka USDA Soil Classification chart, something I became very familiar with in college. The adding of sand to clay, as I stated before, can work, you just have to add a LOT of sand to make a clay soil something else.

By the way, bricks need to be cooked to be bricks. Otherwise, they are just really hard sandy clay chunks.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by Polar_Lace

agway.com

The 3 closest Agways to Houston, TX are Sweet Water, AL, Molino, FL 32577, and Jay, FL 32565. Each a day's drive.

[bizzarbazzar]

The nearest Agways to me are quite a road trip away
1337 miles
Marion, IL 62959
1359 miles
La Center, KY 42056
1374 miles
Paducah, KY 42001