I grow my melons on black plastic, spacing each plant about one foot apart. I then cover them with row cover until there are substantial numbers of female blossoms. I don't prune the vines. I'm not sure what little creature is nibbling your fruits. I've always grown them in one long row so I can't help you on spacing. Elliot Coleman's book "The New Organic Grower" has good info on spacing. I'll look it up if no one else has info on this. Good luck.

David

i grow melons on black plastic also. i space the plants 2' apart in rows 4' apart. i use a piece of plastic thats 100'x20'.
rabbits could also be attacking your melons.
i've never grown honey dews.

I am planning for next years watermelons. The new rage in watermelons is the "personal size" melons. These are even smaller than the older "icebox" types like sugarbaby.

This is a trend away from 30 pounders, and towards a watermelon that one or two people can eat themselves.
These melons are typically less than 10 pounds, have a thin rind for little waste, and are seedless.

They go by names like "pureheart", "bambino", and many others. The seed is very expensive, around $.15 each, has difficulty germinating, and therefore needs to be pot-planted at 80 degrees, then transplanted. Every third row(or plant) has to be a pollinator since the plant makes no pollen of it's own, and thus 1/3 of the crop is seeded melons.

All in all, a difficult crop to grow, but they are asking $3-4 each for the fruit. Has anyone experience with these?

I've always had good luck with sugarbaby, since my market is largely retirees, seldom families, and competition is stiff in my area on the larger sized melons. The concept of smaller sizes, in other words, is sound in my experience, and people are indeed buying into seedless melons, but I'm not sure the effort(and expense) is worthwhile to grow these new types, not to mention the risk in being the first to sell something new at the market.

Here is a link that might be useful: Articles about

okay, sorry for my obvious lck of knowledge here but I have a few more questions. My beds are 4' wide by 16' long. The plants are now about 10 (or more) wide by 18' long. They are growing among the grass in the field now because they outgrew the beds so quickly.

I planted 2 "hills" of "million bucks" watermelon and 1 hill of "orange sunshine". In another bed I planted 4 hills- 1 each of "honey bun", "ambrosia" muskmelons and 1 charentais and 1 honey dew. I thought the honey bun muskmelon would be great since they are "personal size" but every one of them has rotted on the vine. Next to them is the honeydew which is having the problems I mentioned earlier. The charentais and the ambrosia are doing fine. The million bucks watermelon is also doing fine but the orange sunshine watermelon is NOT orange and it is NOT seedless. Could this be because it has cross pollinated with the million bucks instead of the pollinator seed that was included in the pack?

This begs another question. The pack mentioned that there were 2 types of seeds in the orange sunshine pack but I could not tell the difference between them at all. How will I know for next time and, will the pollinator melons have seeds? (maybe this is the one I picked??) How can you tell them apart or will the varieties be different enough that you will know?

I took a bunch to my husbands work (that is where we are selling everything) and a lot of people were asking if I had seedless so I really think that I will have to focus on that next year. I probably could have sold 2 seedless for every 1 that I sold on Friday.

I have to go now but I have more questions to ask later...

Some of your melon problems may be from excessive rainfall I know we've had way too much here in Va. Voles,deer,groundhogs and even squirrels will eat melons slugs will come out at night and munch on them, they leave many pits on the surface of the melon and are really fond of French melons. I plant melons on built up hills. I start in early spring by digging a hole about the size of a 5 gal bucket. Fill the hole with manure and compost and put the dug out soil on top. You can then transplant your melons or plant seed when the air and soil temp are right. I realize this is labor intensive but the results are the sweetest melons you'll ever grow and they will be large. Black plastic around the hill is okay, you can mulch the surrounding area with straw or leaves it will help keep the melons clean and the ground moist.

MELON MYSTERY MENDED-

well, at least one of them. I mentioned that my Orange Sunshine weren't orange or seedless, well (blushing) it turns out that was the pollinator melon that I was looking at. I must have planted more of the pollinators seeds because I have a lot of those melons and only 2 of the orange ones. Do the flowers of a seedless watermelon need to be pollinated with a certain other variety to bear the correct fruit? Or can it be pollinated with any other watermelon provided that it is a seeded type? (for instance, I wanted to grow a seeded and a seedless this year but I ended up with 3 kinds- I am wondering if I could have only grown the 2 I wanted or if the orange sunshine needed to be pollinated by this particular mystery melon.)

When you begin to harvest your melons do your vines all start looking really bad? I have been walking all over the beds (trying to be gentle) in search of ripe melons and can not avoid stepping on the vines. Since I have started picking the vines are looking terrible-wilting and drying out. Is this from me walking on them or should I be looking for another cause?

I solved the critter problem (I am thinking it was voles) by putting red pepper flakes all around the melons that were getting ripe. Then this morning one of the charentais appeared to have gashes on it made from something very sharp and widely spaced. I am wondering if our local predatory birds reached for a vole and got my melon instead.....it looks like a talon mark and this is the only thing I can think could have happened....strange....

the dead vines are from desease. and birds will peck at melons. i dont think the pollinator variety is important at all.

rogers is coming out with a special pollenator vine that doesn't compete with the seedless crop, can be easily identified, etc. It's not gnerally available, but likely will eventually be sold on the open market.
cheers!

Here is a link that might be useful: super pollenizer