What a wonderful scent when walking into a greenhouse or the part of the garden where the sweet, sweet smell of ripened melons are just waiting to be picked. But have you ever wondered why your melons did not preform as well as you thought they would and why they didn't live up to your expectations because they were either too small or they didn't ripen in time.

Even though you can let your melons vines grow unattended and it will result in giving you long stems with multiple fruit sets, most times this is not actually a good thing.

Melons take along time to ripen and if you don't live in a climate that is warm most of the time it is important to limit the amount of fruit left to set so those that are kept can reach full maturity.

In order to get your melon vines cropping well a little intervention and training will make your melons preform much better, producing bigger and more ripe melons.

Training And Ripening

Use a soft paintbrush to fertilize the small fruit that appear on the side shoots, these are the female flowers. For indoor crops remove all the lower side shoots up to a height of 1 foot at the same time the flowers are pollinated.

When the flowers have set fruit and the fruit is roughly walnut size pinch out the sides shoot 1 inch beyond the fruit as this will encourage the fruit to swell.

After roughly a week you should have lots of little melons vigorously growing on the plants. This is where your going to have to get ruthless and suck up your melon pride. Your going to have to thin out the melons dramatically leaving only 4-5 of the best fruit. Also pinch out the growing tip at this time.

If you water and feed with high potash tomato food, this will make the fruit swell further.It is also a good idea to support your melons with a net.

Now all you have to do is wait for your delicious melons to ripen. When they are ripe small circular cracks will appear around the fruits stalk and the sweet smell of the melon fragrance will be mouth watering.

About Author

Tanya Kime-Wallace is a writer and freelance writer as well as the owner of a small gardening business. She developed a love for writing at a very young age and is extremely passionate about the written word. She is capable of writing virtually anything she sets her mind to and is an upcoming horror novelist. She has extensive knowledge about horticulture and gardening teaching workshops relating to this subject and enjoys being able to share it with others. She has many interests and when she feels something is interesting or important enough to share, she will write about it. She is also a mother of two beautiful children and cherishes every second of it.

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