Lilacs:

Hot hats do not work during the summer days of June. The air inside them heats up with sunlight and cooks the seedlings within, even when night temperatures are still cool.

It should not be too late to plant cantaloupes where you live, but skip the indoor starting and seed them directly into the ground, on black plastic. They will grow faster, and avoid transplant shock.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don what do you mean by "on black plastic"?? I had a similar experience with my cantaloupe and watermelon plants that I bought at about 3 inches tall--all wilted away.

Thanks alot,

Ravi

Ravi:

1. Lay down black plastic, as wide and as long as you expect your vine crops to reach. I favor the heavy stuff, available in the construction section of bigbox stores, 4 or 6 mil. in thickness. It can be used more than one season if you are reasonably careful with it.
2. Cut an "X" in the plastic at the point (points) where you want to start your plants. Drop in the seeds, and spread the cut plastic with a U-shaped wire, or cut a round circle so the seeds do not become trapped under the plastic.
3. My view is that buying "started" cucurbit plants is a waste of time and money. It is better to direct seed when the soil has warmed. No time advantage is conferred by using starts, since the transplant shock is severe on cucurbits. Black plastic attracts heat to the soil, and makes cucurbits grow faster and better.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Hmm, the thing is, for a week, the canteloupes did well under the hot hats as transplants. They grew, developed more leaves, wrapped around the twig I'd stuck in the ground with them. Then it rained and got a little cooler. But if they did fine under the hot hats when it was hot and sunny, it obviously wasn't too hot for them. And if the hot hats raise the temperature that much, then they should have been well protected when the weather turned cooler and began to rain.

Last year, I didn't plant melons, but I did plant squash, and I simply could not grow them until I started protecting them with hot hats. Otherwise, the varmints would either dig up the seeds or chomp the new sprouts right down to the ground. I couldn't get anything started until the end of June, when I got the hot hats. The plants did well then, but the frost got to them before the zukes developed enough to pick. This year, I decided to go with grow lights and indoor seed starting.

It's still a mystery to me as to why the canteloupes just flopped over and died.

I have really noticed this year what you have been talking about in regards to transplant shock. My seeded ones i think are overtaking my transplant already... no way am i starting melons in seedtrays ever again...waste of time and space.

The watermelon transplants I set out on May 8th and 10th never looked back are are setting melons now.......the cantaloupes transplanted on May 11th are also beautiful. So for me in my area, situation, and experience transplants of watermelons and cantaloupes are better.....so it depends doesn't it?

Weather probably had a big factor over here. With this past week of 90F EVERYTHING has taken off bigtime.

Wayne:

You are an experienced, highly skilled gardener. That's one of the things it depends on. Maybe the main thing.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

The thing with using hot caps is to make sure they have a decent opening at the top to allow good airflow. Without a good opening, you can easily cook the plants inside on a sunny day, even if it isn't very warm. Even with the opening, the plants are protected from wind and will be warmer and grow rapidly. I normally use wood shingles to shade the transplants from afternoon sun, but lately have been using more and more gallon milk jugs, sometimes 1/2 gallon milk or juice jugs with the bottoms cut out and the tops cut off to leave a 4 inch or larger hole in the top. Works great.

If the plants didn't cook under the caps, it is possible that under the hot caps the plants got pretty moist from the rain, then it warmed up and the humidity rose quite high under the caps and made a perfect environment for various fungal diseases to develop and quickly take the plants.

I've never grown melons from indoor transplants (always 100% transplant loss on any transplanted watermelon), so always grow them from seed and have great results. No covers needed because there is no transition from a protected environment to a garden or transplant shock. Have transplanted volunteer melons in the garden and it does seem to slow them down enough to let the seeded ones catch up.

Another transplant looks like it's going to bite the dust. I put it out yesterday. This morning it was partially skeletonized. Flea beetles!

I sprayed with Neem oil, but is there anyway I can kill the flea beetles once and for all? This particular bed is lousy with them. They don't bother the garlic, and a couple of volunteer potato plants are surviving. But brassica and melons get bit to death in short order.

I *really* want some melons this year!

lilacs, I have not found any organic option against flea beetles. If you are not organic apparently sevin works. The flea beetles I have do not do in a plant, they just slow it down. My eggplants always get them big time, but I still get lots of eggplants.

Next year I would direct seed your melons. Transplants are much more difficult. After several years of failing with transplants I finally figured that one out. If you insist on transplants, do at least direct sow a few seeds as backup. I sow mine over a period, every time I get the seed box out to seed something else in the spring I would add a few melon seeds. The extras if any get pulled. I seeded six melon mounds this year, one didn't sprout any seeds, one had 8+ plants which needed heavy thinning, and the rest have 2-3 now.

Scott

I've been reading up on flea beetles, and I wonder if the larvae ate the roots of the first canteloupe I planted. After a week of being healthy, it just collapsed onto the ground and died. I think I can rule out heart attack.

I did direct sow a couple canteloupe seeds where the first canteloupe was. We'll see.