how to grow melons (plus a podcast)

HAS A JUICY, PLENTIFUL HARVEST of melons eluded you—perhaps because your growing season feels too short up North, or because powdery mildew attacked your plants in high summer, a challenge even in Southern, longer-season areas? How to grow melons: tips for success, in print and a podcast, too, with Tom Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds.how to grow melonsTHE KEY TO SUCCESS with melons wherever you grow them, say Stearns (left), a seed farmer who bravely raises both heirloom and hybrid melons successfully in Zone-4B northern Vermont, is getting them off to a strong start, and ripening them before the weather cools. Though his climate doesn’t provide it naturally, particularly in spring, Stearns simulates what melons want: an early start, consistent warmth, sufficient moisture—and the chance to finish their fruit in the heat, and also well ahead of the ravages of powdery mildew.

Selecting a short-season variety, giving the seeds an indoor headstart of four or five weeks, then transplanting to a raised bed that was warmed up first with a mulch of black plastic puts melons on a path to success. Covering transplants with Reemay for the first four to six weeks outdoors is Stearns’s other key headstart tactic (details below, and in the podcast).

“It’s like they’re in their own little New Jersey,” the Vermonter says of his plants that are positively bursting to escape from the insulating fabric by the time he uncovers them a week or so after flowering begins.

Instead of a spindly little vine or two perhaps 1 to 2 feet long, Stearns says, melons given this extra protection may have as many as 10 vines 3 or 4 feet in length by the time they’re out from under cover to allow insect pollinators to do the melon-making. Sound good?

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