Supporting the Melons

Tuesday was a fun day in the garden, because we got to search among the vines in the Vertical Garden for melons, and then tie them up to support the melons.

Here’s a couple of the young melons on the ‘Tasty Bites’ vine that are getting to the point of needing some support.

This is one of the ‘Edonis’ melons on the other vine. You can tell it’s going to have the seams in it already. The ‘Edonis’ vine only has a couple melons on it, while the ‘Tasty Bites’ has tons of melons starting.

So, because cantaloupe tend to “slip” from the vine when they start to ripen, we need to support them in some way to keep them hanging on the vine until we pick them. We also don’t want the weight of the melons to damage the vines.

The solution….

Old knee socks! We just slipped the melons into the toe, and tied the top to the trellis. We’ll have to see how this works out!

The butternut squash also got “nyloned”. This squash was bigger, so it needed a whole leg of a pair of nylons so that we had enough to tie it on.

What can I say? The whole process made for some interesting pictures and several laughs!

“I need more hoes!”

“What kind of hoes?”

About Rebecca

I'm a Horticulture Educator with Sedgwick County Extension, a branch of K-State Research and Extension, located in Wichita, KS. I teach about fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Posted on July 14, 2011, in Working in the Garden and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.

  1. I think the panty hose will scare the thieves away.

  2. great idea

  1. Pingback: Support Melons « Gardora.net

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