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Want to grow delicious, juicy watermelons without a large garden? 🍉 In this video, you'll learn how to grow watermelons in containers using a simple, affordable method that's perfect for patios, balconies, and small backyards.
We'll cover everything you need to know, including:
Choosing the right container
The best soil mix for healthy growth
How often to water your plants
Fertilizing for bigger, sweeter watermelons
Pollination tips for better fruit production
Common mistakes to avoid
When and how to harvest ripe watermelons
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced gardener, these easy container gardening tips will help you enjoy a successful watermelon harvest without spending a fortune.
🍉 If you enjoyed this video, please Like, Subscribe, and Turn On Notifications for more gardening tips, container growing guides, and easy backyard growing ideas every week.
#Watermelon #ContainerGardening #PatioGardening #GrowWatermelon #GardeningTips #OrganicGardening #GrowYourOwnFood #HomeGarden #VegetableGarden #GardenIdeas
Want to grow delicious, juicy watermelons without a large garden? 🍉 In this video, you'll learn how to grow watermelons in containers using a simple, affordable method that's perfect for patios, balconies, and small backyards.
We'll cover everything you need to know, including:
Choosing the right container
The best soil mix for healthy growth
How often to water your plants
Fertilizing for bigger, sweeter watermelons
Pollination tips for better fruit production
Common mistakes to avoid
When and how to harvest ripe watermelons
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced gardener, these easy container gardening tips will help you enjoy a successful watermelon harvest without spending a fortune.
🍉 If you enjoyed this video, please Like, Subscribe, and Turn On Notifications for more gardening tips, container growing guides, and easy backyard growing ideas every week.
#Watermelon #ContainerGardening #PatioGardening #GrowWatermelon #GardeningTips #OrganicGardening #GrowYourOwnFood #HomeGarden #VegetableGarden #GardenIdeas
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Of all the things folks tell me cannot be done, growing a watermelon without a garden
00:05is near the top of the list. A watermelon, they say, is a great sprawling monster of a vine
00:11that needs half a field to itself, so a body with nothing but a patio or a balcony or a
00:17little
00:17paved yard may as well forget it. Well, I am here to tell you that is not so. You can
00:24grow a sweet
00:25watermelon of your own in a single pot on a patio, no garden ground at all, if you know the
00:31few tricks
00:32of it. It will not be one of those great 50-pound giants, no, but a fine sweet little melon
00:38of your
00:39own, grown in a tub by your own door, and I will show you exactly how it is done. My
00:46name is Elias
00:47Yoder, and I farm here in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, and I have a real fondness for
00:52this kind of growing, the growing of food where there seems to be no room for it, in pots and
00:59tubs and up walls and over rails, for it puts a garden within reach of folks who have not a
01:05foot
01:06of open ground, and there is no better thing than that. I think often of a widow woman my wife
01:12knew,
01:12up in years and living in town with nothing but a small paved back stoop that caught the afternoon sun,
01:19who missed the garden of her younger days something fierce. My wife carried her a little melon plant
01:26one spring, and showed her the way of the tub and the trellis, and that fall the old woman had
01:31grown
01:32herself a sweet little melon on her own back stoop, the first thing she had grown with her own hands
01:38in twenty years, and she wept over it, she was that glad. A melon is a small thing, but grown
01:47by a hand
01:47that thought it could grow nothing anymore, it is not a small thing at all. Now I have made a
01:53whole
01:53video on the growing of watermelons in the general way, the feeding and the watering and the telling
01:59when it is ripe, so I will not go over all that same ground again here, and you can find
02:05it if you
02:06want the full of it. Today I am fixed on the one particular trick, the growing of a melon in
02:12a
02:12container which has a few special rules all its own. Before I go on, I will say this once and
02:19then
02:19leave it be. I gathered the whole of it, all these old ways of growing your own food, into a
02:25book. You
02:27can find it at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I
02:35will not mention
02:35it again. Now the very first thing, and the thing most folks get wrong before they even begin, is the
02:42choosing of the right kind of watermelon, for this makes or breaks the whole business. You must not
02:49try to grow a great big watermelon in a pot. It cannot be done, and if you try it, you
02:55will get
02:56nothing but disappointment. Those giant melons need more root, more room, more water, and more feeding
03:04than any pot can give. So you choose instead one of the small kinds, the little round melons that folks
03:11call icebox melons, for they were so named that one would fit in an old icebox, small melons that grow
03:18to about the size of a good cannonball, or a bit larger, five or eight pounds, not fifty. These little
03:26melons are bred to grow on shorter, tidier vines, and to ripen quicker, and they are every bit as sweet
03:32as the giants, sweeter often. So set your heart on a small icebox melon from the very start, and half
03:39your battle is won. A little melon, for a little space. Try to grow a monster in a bucket, and
03:46you
03:46have beaten yourself before you planted a seed. Now the container itself, and here the rule is plain.
03:53Bigger is better, always, for a watermelon is a thirsty, hungry plant, even in its small kinds. And it
04:01wants all the root room you can give it. So use the biggest vessel you can find, and have space
04:07for.
04:08A half barrel is near perfect. A large tub, a big grow bag, a muck bucket, an old wash tub,
04:16a five
04:17gallon pail at the very least, but bigger by far if you can manage it. Ten or fifteen gallons is
04:23far
04:23better. The more soil you give those roots, the more the plant can drink and feed, and the better your
04:30melon. And whatever vessel you choose, it must have good holes in the bottom for the water to run out,
04:37for a watermelon sitting in a waterlogged pot will rot and die. So drill or punch plenty of drainage holes.
04:46A big vessel, well drained, filled deep with soil, that is your melon's home.
04:53And you fill it with the richest, best soil you can make, for remember that plant has only what is
05:00in
05:00the pot to live on. It cannot send its roots out into the earth to hunt for more. So it
05:07must all be
05:07there in the container. Fill it with good soil mixed with plenty of compost and old rotted manure, rich and
05:16loose and full of feeding, so that pot full holds everything a hungry melon needs. Poor thin dirt in
05:24a pot gives you a poor thin nothing of a plant. Now here is the great trick of container watermelons,
05:32the one that makes the whole thing possible in a small space, and it is this. You grow the vine
05:40up,
05:40not out. A watermelon vine in a pot, left to itself, will go trailing off across your whole patio,
05:49twenty feet of vine underfoot, tripping everyone, and taking all the room you were trying to save.
05:56So instead, you set a stout trellis behind the pot, a strong frame, or a bit of wire fence,
06:04or a set of poles, good and sturdy and anchored well, and you train that vine to climb up it
06:11as
06:12it grows. When the vine is young and reaching, you guide it up onto the trellis and tie it gently
06:19with
06:19soft strips of cloth, and keep leading it upward as it climbs, so all that great length of vine goes
06:27straight up into the air over the pot, taking almost no floor space at all. A whole watermelon vine,
06:35grown up a trellis, takes up the room of a single pot and a flat bit of wall. That is
06:42how a melon
06:43fits on a patio. But now, and here is the part you must not skip, when you grow a melon
06:50up in the air
06:51like that, you have a problem to solve, for the melons themselves will begin to form and swell
06:58hanging up there on the vine, and a swelling watermelon gets heavy, and its own weight will
07:05tear it right off the vine and drop it to smash on the ground long before it is ripe. A
07:12melon was made
07:13to lie on the ground and swell, not to hang. So you must support each melon as it grows, and
07:21the
07:21old way is a sling. As each little melon forms and starts to swell, you make it a little hammock,
07:29a sling of soft cloth, an old shirt, a bit of net, a piece of an old feed sack, a
07:37mesh bag such as
07:38onions come in, and you cradle the melon in that sling and tie the two ends up to the trellis
07:45above,
07:46so the sling bears the whole weight of the growing melon and takes the strain clean off the vine.
07:53And as the melon grows and gets heavier, that sling holds it safe and cradled in the air.
08:00Make each melon its own little hammock, and it will hang there swelling in perfect safety till it is ripe.
08:08That sling is the whole secret of a melon grown up high, and without it you will lose your fruit
08:15to the
08:16fall, so do not forget it. Now with the vessel and the trellis and the slings understood, the rest of
08:24the growing is much as it is for any watermelon, which I have covered in full elsewhere. But let me
08:30give you the points that matter most in a pot, for a pot changes a few things. The first is
08:38sun,
08:39and a watermelon must have all the sun there is. It is a child of the hot country, and it
08:45wants heat
08:46and full sun all day long. So set your pot in the very sunniest, hottest spot your patio or balcony
08:54has,
08:55against a sunny wall if you can, where the heat gathers and bounces back. For the more heat and sun
09:03that plant gets, the sweeter your melon. A watermelon in the shade will give you leaves and no fruit, or
09:12a poor
09:12sour fruit if any. Full blazing sun, and the more the better. The second is water, and this is the
09:23great
09:23labor of container growing, so hear it well. A pot dries out far faster than the open ground, and a
09:31big
09:32thirsty watermelon in a pot in full summer sun will drink a tremendous amount and dry out fast.
09:40Sometimes needing water every single day in the heat, sometimes twice, and a melon that is let go dry
09:47and then flooded will crack its fruit and drop its blossoms. So you must be faithful with the watering,
09:54checking that pot every day in the heat, never letting it bake dry, keeping it evenly moist.
10:01That daily faithful watering is the price of a patio melon, and if you will pay it, the melon will
10:07pay you back.
10:09The third is feeding. For that pot full of soil, rich as you made it, gets used up fast by
10:16a hungry melon,
10:17faster than open ground would. So you feed it along through the season. A good drink of manure tea or
10:25compost tea
10:26every week or two, to keep that limited soil rich enough to swell a sweet melon. Feed the leaves and
10:33vine early while it is growing, and then, once it sets its fruit, it wants the kind of feeding that
10:40builds fruit rather than leaf. So ease off the heavy leafy feeding and let it put its strength into the
10:47melon. And the fourth is pollination, which matters more up on a patio, for you may be up on a
10:54balcony
10:55where the bees do not come so freely as they would to an open garden. A watermelon, like all its
11:02squash
11:02kin, has its separate boy and girl flowers, and the bees must carry the pollen from the one to the
11:09other,
11:09or you get no fruit at all. So if you see plenty of flowers but no melon setting,
11:16the bees are not finding you, and you must do their work yourself. It is easy. In the morning,
11:23you pick a male flower, the plain one on a thin stem, and you strip its petals and brush its
11:30middle
11:30gently against the middle of the female flowers, the ones with the tiny swelling like a baby melon at
11:36their base. A moment's work, and you have set your fruit yourself. I have shown this same hand
11:43pollinating with the cucumbers, and it is the same simple trick here. Let me say a plain word about
11:51who profits from you believing this cannot be done, and it is no dark scheme. The folks who sell
11:58watermelons are glad enough for the apartment dweller and the patio gardener to believe a melon
12:03needs a great field and is simply beyond them so that they buy every melon they ever eat at the
12:10store.
12:10There is no money in a man learning that a half barrel, a trellis, a few old rags for slings,
12:18and a small melon seed would grow him a sweet watermelon of his own by his own door. Nobody sells
12:26that. So the belief goes around that melons are only for those with big gardens and folks with sunny
12:33patios never even try, when a fine sweet little melon was theirs for the growing all along. It is not
12:41hidden. It is only never taught, for there is no trade in teaching a man to grow what he would
12:47otherwise buy. The money runs toward the store and away from the tub on your patio, and it always has.
12:55So there is the whole of it. Choose a small icebox melon, never a giant, for a pot. Plant it
13:04in the
13:05biggest, best drained vessel you can find, filled deep with rich soil and compost. Set a strong trellis
13:13behind it and train the vine to climb straight up, saving all your floor space. Then cradle each swelling
13:20melon in a soft sling tied to the trellis, so its weight never tears it from the vine. Give it
13:27the
13:27hottest, sunniest spot you have, water it faithful every day in the heat, feed it well, and hand
13:34pollinate if the bees do not come. Do that and you will grow a sweet watermelon of your own on
13:41a patio
13:42no bigger than a table top, and cut it open on a hot day and hardly believe you grew it
13:48yourself
13:49with no garden at all. Tell me down in the comments what county you garden in, and whether you are
13:56growing on a patio or a balcony with no garden ground, for I have a real soft spot for the
14:02folks
14:02growing food in the tight spaces, and I would like to know how many of you there are. And if
14:08you have
14:08grown a melon, or any big vining thing in a pot, and found a good trick for the slinging or
14:14the trellis,
14:15put it down there, for that is just the knowledge another patio grower is hunting for. Next time out
14:22here I want to show you how to build a proper compost pile the old way, layer upon layer,
14:28so that you can make the rich black soil that fills these pots for nothing. For a container melon lives
14:35entirely on what you put in the pot, and buying that soil by the bag would spoil the thrift of
14:42the whole
14:42thing. It is the foundation under all of it, even on a patio, and it is past time I showed
14:49you.
14:49But for now remember this, there is almost nothing that truly cannot be grown in a small space,
14:57if a body is willing to think a little and work with the plant instead of against it. Grow the
15:03melon up
15:04instead of out, cradle its fruit in a sling, and the monster that needed a field fits neatly by your
15:12door. It is not the size of your ground that makes a gardener, it is the size of your willingness.
15:19The
15:19people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
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