Sweet Success with Cantaloupes

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In the deep, sandy soil at Sand Hill Preservation Center in Calamus, Iowa, cucurbit expert Glenn Drowns grows melons in hills spaced 6 feet apart. Goldman goes with 8 feet or more between hills, with two plants per hill. “Melons like to be crowded. They are very gregarious,” she says. In melon-growing lingo, a “hill” may not actually be much of a hill. Rather, it’s a planting hole enriched with about 4 gallons of good compost, which is raised when first prepared and tends to flatten as the season progresses.

Both Drowns and Goldman grow their melons on black plastic mulch, which has a long track record of increasing melon yields, especially in cool summer climates. Field trials comparing biodegradable black paper mulch to black plastic in New York state, Wisconsin and Nova Scotia indicate that melons produce best with black plastic, but there are alternatives. Newspapers covered with an organic mulch — such as chopped leaves or weathered sawdust — will suppress weeds and retain soil moisture, and you can help keep ripening melons nice and warm by placing them on a black rock or dark-colored plastic plate.

“Here in the buggy Midwest, it’s always a good idea to start plants indoors,” Drowns says. “Set them out when they get two true leaves, and grow them under a floating row cover until they begin to flower. The row cover keeps the insects off to prevent inoculation with disease from dirty-mouthed cucumber beetles.” (These beetles spread bacterial wilt — see “Cantaloupe Clinic”.) If you don’t have a row cover, you can stitch together an alternative using tulle (available at craft and fabric stores for about $1 a yard). Or you can spray your plants with Surround — a feeding deterrent that coats the plants with a fine film of clay, which makes them less appetizing to insects.

When you remove the row covers, bees and other pollinators will work the open flowers, but expect plenty of striped and spotted cucumber beetles as well. Big, healthy plants can tolerate a bit of feeding, but because the beetles transmit bacterial wilt, you may decide that the only good cucumber beetle is a dead one. You can put a big dent in the local population of this pest by sucking them up with a cordless vacuum cleaner. Practice on weeds until you learn how to handle the vacuum without mangling leaves, and work late in the day, when pollinators tend to be less active.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print