Last Summer I ate a particularly delicious melon I bought from the supermarket. I thought I would try my hand at growing some from its seed.
Here they are planted in soil blocks. In fact this lot totally failed to germinate. A bit casually I didn’t use seed compost. Normal compost is a bit coarser and it seemed like the seedlings couldn’t struggle their way through it. I thought this was yer typical gardener’s myth but it turned out to be true.
Undeterred I tried again with a finer compost (this time in a seed tray) and they grew very vigorously.
Supposedly melons need a warmer temperature to grow in our climate. They will do well in a green house but I don’t have one of them. The window in my room has a nice south-facing aspect. It gets a lot of sun. So I planned to grow them there. I prepped a trough on the window sill, suspending stones on strings from the frame above so they would sit under each of the three root balls. By this method I plan to train the melon’s vine around each string.
When I popped the three strongest-looking seedlings out of the tray the roots were looking healthy. As far as I know that circular one off the bottom is the tap root.
I sunk them in deep burying the stem underground. This is cool apparently. Gets them snug.
A week or so later they are really thriving. I will update you on their progress. Let’s see if we can’t grow something we can eat.