In the meantime, the watermelons imported from warmer countries are in season in the supermarkets in this country almost all year round. With a little skill, you can also harvest the low-calorie thirst-quenchers from your own garden.

The necessary conditions for cultivation

The Tsamma melon originally came from the hot regions of Africa as a wild form of the watermelon. Since the flesh of these melons tastes rather bitter, their seeds are still mainly roasted in fat or ground into flour. The cultivated yield varieties of the watermelon also need a lot of light and heat for their growth, just like the original form. So that you can also harvest ripe fruit in our latitudes, you have to make the most of the season outdoors or in the greenhouse from the beginning to the end.

Prefer watermelons on the windowsill

When you prefer and later plant the watermelons, you should pay attention to a few things for a successful harvest:

  • the sensitivity of the roots of watermelon seedlings
  • the slow transition from the room into the blazing sunlight
  • the danger of slugs in the garden

Since young watermelons are very sensitive to pricking out, they should be sown as directly as possible in spring pots or in rotting seed pots and planted out with them. In addition, the young plants should not be planted unprotected from the window sill in a sunny location on sunny days. It is better to gradually acclimate them to the strength of the sunlight by placing the pots in the garden for a few hours each day for a few days. Young melon plants are a delicacy for slugs, which is why you should provide protective measures such as chopped straw around the plants in the event of a heavy slug infestation.

Harvest ripe fruit at the right time

If you have brought the plants forward in good time and planted them in a sufficiently warm location, you can tell that the fruits are fully ripe by the fact that the parts of the watermelon plant turn brown and die in autumn before the first frost. However, the degree of ripeness can also be recognized by the sound of the watermelons and the yellowing of the place where they are placed.

tips and tricks

Botanically, watermelons should not actually be considered fruit, but vegetables, since all parts of the plant die off when they ripen, except for the fruit.

WK

Category:

Vegetable garden