Occasionally small watermelon fruits (Citrullus lanatus) drop from the crops as babies instead of expanding into the giants you’re expecting. Watermelons abort fruits for several reasons: because there are too many on a single plant, because the fruits have succumbed to a disease or because the plant is not healthy enough to sustain them, because the blossoms weren’t adequately pollinated.
Extra Fruits
Most watermelon varieties can not sustain more than a couple of fruits on each plant. The plant will abort the youngest fruits to maintain the bigger and older ones if the plant produced over this. Before getting discouraged about the melons that are currently shriveling, count how many ones the plant has set.
Unhealthy Plants
A plant won’t be able to encourage as many melons as a healthy one. If the plant appears yellow, or in any way that difficulty should be suspected by you. To stop this from happening, don’t plant your melon seeds over two weeks prior to the last frost date, and pick a website with sandy loam — and a pH between 6 and 6.8 — where no melons have grown before. Squeeze two inches of compost into the top 1 foot of that soil, before covering it closely with a black plastic mulch to allow it to heat up before you sow the seeds set out transplants. After cutting holes around two feet apart sow three seeds 1 inch deep in the soil eliminating the two weakest plants after the seeds germinate and leaving the most powerful in place. Top the remaining plants with row cover until they start to blossom to protect them and be certain they receive at least 1 inch of water per week .
Inadequate Pollination
Fruits that didn’t get sufficient pollen during fertilization finally will probably be rejected by this plant. A single female flower distributed over all the lobes of the stigma must be seen by honeybees at least six to eight occasions and fertilized with between 500 and 1000 grains of pollen, before it’s considered pollinated. This may not happen if the weather during this period happens to be windy, rainy or cold, as honeybees don’t venture from the hives. The crops of watermelons will abort their fruits whenever they aren’t fertilized by pollen from the crops of ones. To stop inadequate pollination, try to improve the number of bumblebees in your property. They may carry greater quantities of pollen compared to honeybees do and are more likely to fly under adverse conditions. Since den at clumps of grass and mouse holes that are abandoned, make a few unmowed and untilled areas in your property. The presence of a variety of plants that bloom throughout the year will encourage bumblebees to stay around.
Allergic Diseases
Several different types of fungi in the soil could infect melons and trigger”belly rot,” usually after periods of wet weather. You may prevent this by choosing varieties and sowing them where melons have not grown before. Avoid overwatering the crops and permit the fruits to rest on top of a black plastic mulch instead of on the ground.