I wasn't able to find anything about this possibility online, which made me more excited. The idea of a self-pollinating melon had me bouncing off the walls. Since three plants had the same trait, I thought, maybe it's something to do with my soil? With the help of a friend (Joseph Lofthouse) I learned that this is relatively normal for watermelons, which dimmed my enthusiasm not at all but simply turned it in another direction.
If it wasn't in the soil, but inherent in the plant, I can breed for it. Hehehehe.
Most of the watermelons ripening from the landrace plants are icebox size, which isn't what I wanted. I made a mistake last year and bred in the Sugar Baby watermelon, which is slow growing and produces small melons. It appears that the majority of the plants that survived have Sugar Baby ancestry, but I'm trying for medium to large so I need to avoid taking seeds from any of these. Another interesting thing is that many of the melons currently ripening are misshapen, which I've also never seen before. This may be due to under pollination, but the fact that ONLY the landrace plants are doing it suggests that there's some oddity to the way the genes are combining.
Of the surviving plants, 2 have not bloomed at all. This was rather expected, as I deliberately planted in an area with poor soil and little water in order to select for the strongest. Another has produced only male blossoms. Two of my landrace plants have large melons. One of the two had four flowers pollinate, although two aborted later. It was also one of those with perfect flowers. This will be the primary female parent for this year. One of the two remaining melons was pollinated by hand and should include genes from Hopi Red, my landrace (Ali Baba + either traditional or Sugar Baby), and Joseph Lofthouse Landrace.
Most of the surviving landrace plants took after the female parent in shape and color, but after the male parent in size. All but one had the pale green skin of the Ali Baba watermelon and the seed structure of the Ali Baba, but with varying sizes and shapes consistent with the plants used as pollinators last year. The plants also took after the pollen donor, those with the icebox size melons growing much slower on a less robust plant.
All pollinated flowers follow the same general growth pattern, the watermelon being around 3 inches long twenty days after pollination, 6 inches long after thirty days and 9 inches long after 40 days. The watermelon stops growing when it's close to its adult size and gains that last half inch or inch through the rest of its growing period. By the time it reaches its adult size some seeds have already matured. Extending this tendency out, it is likely that any watermelon can mature relatively quickly once it reaches its mature size depending on environmental factors. Removal of water, not enough sun, a cold snap, may all trigger the melon to full maturity quicker than it would normally go. I'll have to test for this in the future and see if it bears out in real life, but based on my observations it's a real possibility.
Next year the primary female parent will be either my "traditional" watermelon or the Jubilee, introducing one more line into the mix. In 2020 or 2021 the lines will start to stabilize and I should start to see the results of the mixing. That's when the real fun begins, choosing for the traits I want.
I started this particular landrace for a couple reasons. I wanted to learn the principles before I started on any of the major food crops, and I had seeds for several different varieties of heirloom melons.
I am desperately concerned about food security. The majority of the population has no idea where their food comes from or how it gets to them. They're perfectly satisfied that THIS WEEK the grocery store has what they need. With more and more farmland being sold off because of taxes and other economic problems, we rely to a large extent on food produced in other areas and trucked in. Often from other countries.
When (not if) that supply chain stops, we must be able to provide for ourselves. In order to do that we must be able to grow the maximum amount in local conditions, and we can't do that with seeds sourced from the Oregon coast or Arkansas. Even seeds from other desert or semi-desert areas wouldn't precisely fit our environment. They have to be produced here, grown here, without fertilizers or soil additives, and to the extent possible without additional water.
The simplest way to do that, and to make sure that those plants will be able to adapt when conditions change, is a local landrace.
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