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Some of the watermelon (thelemmy.club)
submitted 19 hours ago by to c/gardening@lemmy.world
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Got near a hundred mini watermelon this year, the very late ones were no good but for a couple months they were glorious. Mini love variety, it was a brutally hot summer and they flourished, I let them take over the whole garden.

Two plants survived being overrun by watermelon, the asparagus and the hong tsoi. I'm sort of resting it until "spring" which is planted around Feb here.

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[–] [S] 8 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

A rack of watermelon is so funny because boobs. I vote for that.

Next year also trying piel del sapo but historically every other melon or squash is only a trap crop, and these Mini Love survive - bugs hit them too but they grow so fast still get many (and delicious) melons.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    Piel de sapo (Toad Skin) is from the arid regions of Spain. Commonly grown in the Almeria region under greenhouses. The old OP variety is susceptible to just about everything. Some of the newer varieties are more disease resistant. They are 100% grafted in Spain because of widespread MNSV in the soil. So they have some pretty shitty root systems.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon_necrotic_spot_virus

    You might have better luck with a canaries melon. They are often grown in tropical regions and tend to be a bit more resistant to fungal diseases.

    If you have severe cucumber or squash beetle infestation, look into some netting. Of course under netting fungal diseases are much worse.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 hours ago

    Squash bugs, yeah. I haven't lost anything to fungus but do the mid-season spray when I do the annual spray of my citrus trees. Main growing season is not summer! More things grow in winter here. So depending on how hot they need to be, might be able to get them set before the rains. We have days over 70 most all year but lows in Jan/Feb sometimes near freezing, sometimes not - last year a freak double tap freeze killed my spring garden but that is unusual. Left me wishing I had planted some collards.

    Worst case I guess it will be next year's trap crop - this year I tried the Natsu Cocoa and oof the bugs loved those, did not get even one. I do love the mini love ones though, so delicious and very enthusiastic about setting fruit.

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