Part 4 – Top Tips on Caring for your Mini Melons

Mini Melons are an absolute delight to grow and surprisingly very low maintenance, once you have your support system up and running to hold the weight of the mini melons.

If you’d like to know what type of Mini Melons you can grow in the UK, read Part 1 – Mini Melons – What Varieties to grow and What you will need to grow them

Mini Cantaloupe Melon

I hadn’t a clue how to grow Mini Melons but I decided to face the uncertainty and grow them anyway. After all whats the worst that could happen?!

They might fail you may say. After growing vegetables for quite a few years now and my failures with Brussels Sprouts, I know now that failure means that you have tried and learnt.

Then you realise that way didn’t work, you come up fighting and find a different way next time. You never know you might surprise yourself and succeed first time.

I have seen a few victories with new vegetable growers on Threads this week, who have finally harvested their first ever tomatoes & onions etc. It’s great to see others achieve their first harvests.

If you are not on Threads, it has a fabulous gardening community, enter the tag #gardeningthreads to see gardens worldwide and Follow me on Threads @traceysowgrowharvest

Top Tips for Growing Mini Melons

Mini Melons – Minnesota Midget

There are a few important things a Mini Melon plant will need in order to produce the fruits:

1. Constant Water as they contain 90% Water

My Experience: I grow my Mini Melons in the Easy2Grow Autopot watering system which is a drip feed watering system via the roots which links to a water tank.

This is compact system is setup in the greenhouse in pots with piping to a small reservoir. I have found this system is very effective and I’m glad I invested the money on a 6 pots plus tank kit.

Link to Autopot Easy2Grow System

I bought from LondonGrow.com – Autopot Easy2Grow System which was cheaper, starting from £54 for the kit of 2 pots, piping, wicking and 47L reservoir.

Mini Melons (Blue) & Sweet Peppers (orange) in Autopots Watering System

2. A Strong Support System

My Experience: I was unprepared how heavy Mini Melons are when you have 3 on one plant! My support system currently is 3 canes up the centre of the pot and I tied the sprawling vines all in with twine to the canes. I started with one cane but it wasn’t strong enough to hold the fruits.

Next Time: I will make a trellis support with the vines tied in so they can hang vertically and not trail all over the staging! I have 4 plants and they have taken over one quarter of the greenhouse and I can’t get to the back corner to even pick some of the mini melons.

3. Top Tip – Cut off the Growing Tip

Cut off the end of the vine after it is producing 3 or 4 fruits on it.

Cutting off the tip of the vine is like taking out the growing tip of the plant (same as you do for tomato plants ). This forces the plant to concentrate on growing the fruits and not growing the vine length.

What’s Next?

Wait for the Aroma to know when to Harvest.

Mini Melons take 70 days from sowing seeds to harvest which means harvesting is soon at around the end of August.

Here’s my tweet on X this week and I was reliably informed to wait for the Aroma, it’s a sweet fruity smell.

I’ll let you know when I smell it!

Grow Mini Melons Series

Part 1 πŸ“• Mini Melons – What Varieties to Grow & What you need to grow.

Part 2 πŸ“— Mini Melons – How to Sow Seeds.

Part 3 πŸ“˜ Mini Melons – It’s time to Pot on your Seedlings with Video.

Part 4 πŸ“™ Top Tips for Caring for your Mini Melons.



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