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Indiana

I cut open one of my smaller melons for the church devotional today and it had a pretty decent gap inside.
Anyway I was wondering how common this is and how to prevent it from happening?

9/21/2014 9:54:03 PM

Home of happy lil plants

Just about all of today's melon have a certain extent of the hollow gap inside some paper thin some have the whole melon nearly, aaverage is 1-2in gap inside... that is IF there is a such thing is an average.melon

9/22/2014 4:13:22 AM

sevierville, Tn

some you can put a basketball inside the hole ! i wish it was only 1-2 inches ;)

9/22/2014 6:32:54 AM

Indiana

Hopefully the one I'm bringing to the weigh off isn't to bad.

9/25/2014 1:02:49 AM

Linden, Mi.,

Hoping here for the best as well !
Weigh one, had 40 lbs. of air !

9/25/2014 12:39:04 PM

Corryton, TN

I've asked the same question several times.
Croley bend sent me this link, by the way thanks:
http://extension.udel.edu/weeklycropupdate/?p=7484

A couple points of interest to me were the 3rd paragraph and the last.

9/30/2014 10:15:03 AM

Corryton, TN

I do believe the problem is the same in seeded and seedless. This year I had a commercial patch across the driveway from my competition plants. Zero hollow hearts in the commercial patch. All hollow again in the competition to varying degrees.



This is the first year that I had issues with exploding rinds, for lack of a better term, in my commercial melons. Touch them with a knife and BAM they would split open nearly completely at times. Three different varieties and seeds were from the same packs that I've used for a couple years. Dated for use in 2011. No issues with exploding in previous years. This years crop was easily 15% larger on average in individual melon size. Very little disease pressure until melons were ripe. Previous years I have always had issues. Numbers of melons was through the ceiling. Gave a bunch to shelters and schools and still didn't harvest 50% of crop.



Competition patch had the same old disease/health issues, hollow hearts and much smaller than expected results. This patch actually got 2 sprayings where as commercial got zero. More consistent watering here.

9/30/2014 10:22:20 AM

Corryton, TN

Reasons and hypothesis:

In the spring I prepared the competition patch as normal using recommendations from Western Labs. I applied what was recommended.



Commercial patch was prepared for sweet corn using recommendations from the same lab. Decided to move the corn to another location and plant melons in the prepared spot. Had the lab send me new recommendations for melons based on the first test to see if anything else was needed. Nope. Recommendation were a LOT lower than what had already been applied for several nutrients. Planted anyway and the plants looked weird (crinkled leaves) until they started to vine.



I think the soil may need to be jacked up more than recommended on the front end especially.



I have noticed when cross cutting culls there is quite often a hollow heart. Even when they are only finger length. This seems to confirm what the article has mentioned near the end. It makes me wonder if these plants might need a little extra juice during the earliest development of the females.

Just my 2 cents.

9/30/2014 10:25:35 AM

Corryton, TN

Should have said more consistent watering in competition patch.

9/30/2014 10:32:40 AM

Indiana

That was a very interesting article, I think it will be pretty helpful. Thank you very much brotherdave.

10/1/2014 2:15:25 AM