![]() Remove covers once fear of frost has passed to avoid injury from too much heat, and to allow bees and other pollinators access to the flowers.The tunnel also protects the plants from wind and flying insects.Under the cover, daytime and nighttime temperatures are higher than outside the tunnel.Low tunnels are row covers supported by wire hoops.Hot caps protect the individual melon plants from cold during their first weeks in the garden.Cut holes in the plastic mulch for seeds or transplants at the time of planting, not before.Using season extension techniques such as soil-warming mulches, hot caps and low tunnel row covers, gardeners can get the soil to heat up sooner and protect melons in late summer if there is an early frost.įor both direct-seeded and transplanted melon plants, these techniques and materials can allow planting two or three weeks earlier. You must grow both types to get any fruit from the seedless variety.You can buy seedless watermelon plants with a small number of seeds of a different variety to be the pollinizer.Even seedless watermelon varieties require pollination to set fruit.Watermelon has separate male and female flowers, usually on the same vine.Poorly pollinated flowers either fail or produce misshapen fruit.The number of seeds set helps determine fruit size and shape.Pollen needs to transfer from the male flower to the female flower on this day for seed set and fruit development.Cantaloupe flowers have a pollination window of one day.A short, thick ovary, which will become the fruit, attaches female and perfect flowers close to the vine.Slender stems attach male flowers to the vine.Cantaloupe and honeydew vines produce two flower types: male flowers and perfect flowers (having both male and female parts). ![]() Even in the southern part of the state, and in the Twin Cities heat island, varieties with fewer days to maturity are more likely to provide a satisfying harvest.Choose varieties with fewer days to harvest (65 to 80) to increase the chances of harvesting more fruit that has ripened under warm conditions.Only varieties with short growth cycles of less than 90 days to maturity can produce a ripe fruit in the north, and the first ripe fruit might be the last.Honeydew melons are smooth-skinned, with pale flesh that may be white, green, or orange.
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