Building a food secured Africa
Have you ever gone watermelon shopping and began looking out for the smaller ones to buy? No! Not at all, because no one ever tries to buy the small ones. Watermelon is known for its unique size that each time we hear the name WATERMELON what comes to mind is a LARGE, round and green fruit, it’s even such that in some countries or states, watermelon farmers hold annual competitions on who has the largest watermelon fruit in their farm. We feel kind of disappointed or cheated when we buy watermelon fruit and it’s not as big as we expected it to be, you can then imagine how frustrating it is when you plant watermelon, put in your hard work and when you inspect your farm all you see are mini ball sized watermelon fruits lying around the farm beds, annoying right?.
There are many reasons why watermelon fruits turn out small even after you seemingly have done everything right; from too much water to too little water, too high or too low temperature, pest and diseases etc, or could it be that you probably purchased the watermelon seed specie that produces small fruits? You know, watermelon comes in diverse sizes and cultivars; we have those that grow as large as a potato sack weighing up to 68kg (150pounds) and those that grow to a small size weighing 2kg (5pounds) and even this could be considered big too in some places or maybe you are not just patient enough to wait for the watermelon to develop into its large size and you are already perplexed, watermelon fruits need at least 70-130 days to get to maturity. So if you are certain that what you planted are not the small sized species and its past the time they should have matured, then what could be the problem?
Here are five reasons why your watermelon fruits are not big;
POOR POLLINATION:- We all know pollination is very vital in any developing plant, if at the time of pollination the weather condition was not so favorable for pollinators (bees, butterflies) maybe the weather was too windy, hot, cold or rainy, pollination process can be affected and you might just end up with very little looking watermelons or none at all.
FAILURE TO PRUNE:- Pruning is the process of cutting off excess branches or even fruits, many farmers practice pruning even to an extreme level just to get the desired enormous watermelon fruit. If your vines happen to have many fruits developing from it, its best you cut off some of them and leave the bigger ones to grow to their fullest size, if you leave all the fruits to develop, the vines will struggle to provide nutrients for all the fruits and they will never get to their expected size. Trust me, pruning is not very exciting for anyone, it’s kind of painful to see all those fruits go, but it’s the sacrifice you have to make to get those large sized watermelons.
PLANTING LOCATION:- The ideal soil for watermelons is the sandy loamy soil, any other type of soil is not suitable for them and can stunt their growth and development especially if the soil is the heavy type like clay soil which do not contain any nutrients giving you small sized melons. You can carry out a soil analysis to find out if your soil is sandy loamy and suitable for planting or it’s not.
ROOT DAMAGE:- The roots are what the plants use to absorb nutrients from the soil, strong healthy roots absorb enough nutrients, weak unhealthy roots, not so much. If during the process of transplanting or cultivating around the plants, their roots get damaged, then you may have a problem with the plants absorbing sufficient nutrients to get the fruits to grow to a large size. So you have to be careful not to damage the roots while transplanting or cultivating.
PEST & DISEASES:- Disease spreading pests like Aphids are the major cause when it comes to small fruits that have been damaged. When aphids attack your plants, they introduce the disease mosaic virus into your plants, symptoms of this disease are molted leaves and short vines, this disease can in a very short time defect the growth of your watermelon fruits that they not only turn out small but defected too that you can’t even consume them. What you need to do in this case is get rid of the aphids, you can easily spot them lounging beneath the leaves, so first of all pick out all infected leaves and dispose of them far away from your farm, then spray pesticides, make sure you particularly spray under the leaves and their surfaces too, continue the process weekly until you are certain that your farm is aphid free, I bet you will start to see changes in your watermelon size after this.
It really takes a lot of diligence and hard work to get sizable watermelon, but if you stick to the book you are sure to get those big melons you desire and maybe your melons might just stand a chance at signing up for that watermelon competition we talked about.