Friday, June 15, 2018

Watermelon Landrace Update

On May 15th I planted the watermelon patch. Since I'm doing a landrace I planted the pollinators (Congo, Joseph Lofthouse Landrace and Hopi Red) on three corners of the patch. Those were started in the greenhouse. The Hopi Red and JLL were immediately eaten by insects, the Congo had no problems so it is considerably further along than the rest.


On the same day I planted 25 watermelon seeds from last year's crosses.

At this point (6/15) there are 15 left. Others failed to thrive (2) or were entirely eaten by insects. Several didn't come up at all.

Of the fifteen, three are obviously thriving.


Others...aren't.


Most of them are somewhere in between.

To this point I've only been removing those that were obviously dead or dying--seed leaves without any green, secondary leaves not developing. At the end of June (probably) I'll be sorting it down to five.

I'm tempted to leave more than five, although that would probably crowd them too much. These fifteen survived the sandy soil, lack of water, intermittent heat and cold, insect attack, and even being stepped on (oops). My plant-brain says they deserve to survive. The thinking brain says get rid of the weakest.

We'll see.

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