Update on Watermelon..

Our second short term crop was sowed in 3rd week of December. In case you missed it, you can look up http://techie2aggie.blogspot.in/2011/12/watermelon-short-term-crop-2.html

Today is the 50th day and the growth has been good so far. This year the crop in TN has been affected due to excessive morning dew and Cyclone Thane (which occured last week of December). One would think that due to lesser supply, the market rate would be higher; however, influx of watermelons from Karanataka and AP has kept the rate fairly constant.

At 26 days..

Flowering was first seen at 28 days. Flower on the left is female while the other one is male flower. Unlike Brinjal, watermelon is a cross pollinated crop.

At 40 days.

Healthy green foliage at 43 days.

















So far we have not had any serious pest issues. Red spider mites were seen occasionally on the back side of the leaves. Detecting these can be challenging especially in red soil. Simba 2ml/L was used for this. In the first 20 days, green caterpillars were noticed, Larvin 2g/L was used to control them. A few leaf miners were seen as well for which any systemic insecticide can be used.

Deficiency of Boron leads to splitting of fruits. A couple of fruits were found to be cracked a few days back. Solubor, which is water soluble will be applied along with the fertigation that we give every 3 days.

In another 20-30 days, we hope to harvest the crop. More updates then!