Other cultivation practices
Pollination Pollination One to two bee colonies per hectare should be placed in the field when male flowers begin to appear. Poor pollination often causes misshapen fruit. A watermelon plant seldom produces more than two to three harvest- able fruit. While it is too expensive to remove all excess fruit, misshapen and split fruit may be selected in the field to allow the plants to channel nutrients into producing marketable fruit. Care must be taken to prevent the bee colonies from being exposed to pesticides |
Fruit pruning
Fruit pruning in watermelons should begin as soon as defective melons are noticed. Remove misshapen and blossom-end rot fruit to promote additional fruit set and better size of the remaining melons. If a market demands larger melons, remove all but two or three well-shaped melons from each plant. To avoid disease spread, do not prune melons when vines are wet. |
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