How big should a watermelon vine be before watermelons grow please ?

 How big should a watermelon vine be before watermelons grow please ?

I planted about 7 small plants a few months ago. The vines are about
2m long now. They flower but that is all they do. The leaves on the
vines are only about 3 inches long.

Is there a site where they have images on how big the vine gets to
give me an idea on how much growing the plant has to do before I get
watermelons growing please.

 c wrote:


All I can say is that your watermelon vine is seriously demented. It should
have taken over your garden by now with big leaves up to 30cm in diameter.

Does the vine look healthy?

--
Regards

Lionel.

 On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:13:57 +1000, Lionel van den Berg


Yes. It gets plenty of water. We have a bore and 5000 litre water tank
with good soil. I'm in Perth WA where its been sunny for the past 46
days without rain but I have been watering the plants two or three
times a day.

The cucumber plants I had were also small but procuded very tasty
cucumbers before I used a bit to much blood and bone with potashe
which dried the plant out and killed it.

All my plants are well spaced out. The tomatoes down the side of the
house have grown really well and the taste is really nice and sweet. I
get about 40 tomatoes from each plant.

The carrors, pototo and every thing else has gown as it should but not
the watermelon plants.

 
depends on the cultivar - small watermelon types grow on small vines - it's
a matter of proportion to expected fruit size afaik. are you growing
full-size watermelon? if so, something is probably seriously wrong!! if it's
a small cultivar & the plant size is ok, probably a matter of fertilising
the flowers.

male flowers grow on a stalk, female flowers have a swelling beneath the
flower that eventually (hopefully) becomes a fruit when fertilised. in the
mornings, either use a small paintbrush to take pollen from the males & put
it in the females, or pull off male flowers & dip them in.

if you can't find any female flowers, try nipping out the tips of the vines
to help them come on (check again in a few days).

if your plants are supposed to be full-size & there is therefore something
wrong, you can try giving them a boost with liquid fertiliser (preferably
home-made ;-). potential problems might be anything - who knows? possibly
soil fertility or not enough water or bad drainage, but it might be anything
(including moody plants ;-) one big problem would be if your weather isn't
warm enough.
kylie

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Kylie's post.  She saved me the effort of
responding because she's said everything I was going to. :-))