Day 55 – Giant watermelons are beginning to grow fast

Day 55 is just past the half way mark of 100 days to harvest. The 5 plants are spreading out with little yellow flowers and baby watermelons.

In order to keep track and describe the progress of each plants I have assigned them numbers, WP1, WP2, WP3, WP4 and WP5 (Watermelon Plant #).

WP2 has the largest watermelon so far. Look at the picture with the measuring tape. The watermelon is almost 4 inches long. Very good WP2!

WP3 has the most large watermelons. It has three which are between 1 ½ to 2 inches. I will allow these to grow just a bit larger before I decide which one to keep and trim the rest off. I heard plants will grow larger fruit if there are no other fruits to take away resources.

WP1, WP4 and WP5 all are healthy growing plants with 1 watermelon about an inch long on each plant.

This past week I gave WP1 and WP2 pigeon manure instead of the regular 20-20-20 fertilizer I have been giving the other WPs. I would like believe WP2 has such a large watermelon because of the pigeon manure. I am a little hesitant to use pigeon manure on all the watermelon plants because of the fear I may over fertilize them and burn them and cause them to die. That would be a tragic ending to this experiment.

I may just slowly introduce pigeon manure to the other plants. I know using pigeon manure is the right thing to do but I don’t want to ruin this experiment.

I am also thinking about placing a padding of some type under the watermelons to get them off the ground and perhaps cut down on any insects pests.

Does the watermelon fruit need sunshine or will it do better if shaded? I don’t mean shading the whole plant, just the fruit.

Day 55 and counting.