How to grow Watermelon in Containers (easy tips)

Growing watermelons successfully in pots starts even before you plant watermelon seeds. You need to choose a pot that is large enough for your container watermelon to thrive. Watermelons grow quickly and require a lot of water, so a 5 gallon or larger container is recommended. Make sure the container you’ll be growing your watermelons in has enough drainage holes.

Fill the watermelon container with potting mix or other soilless mix. Don’t use dirt from your garden. This will quickly compact in a container and make it difficult to grow watermelons in containers.

How to grow watermelon at home, on the balcony, in a container

Choosing a place and capacity for watermelon

The seedling pot should receive maximum light; install it on the south side, or arrange additional lighting.

For planting seeds in a container at home or for a balcony, use a large container at once. Dimensions: at least 50-60 cm deep, 45-50 cm in diameter. The first layer in the container should be good drainage – watermelon really does not like dense soils.

The depth of planting seeds is 5–6 cm.

Prepare special supporting structures: mesh, trellis, wire. The height of the trellis should be at least 1m 20cm – 1m 40cm.

Do Watermelons Grow Well in Pots?

Watermelons grow well in pots if you select the right variety, use a large enough container filled with good soil and find a location that gets enough sun.
For each plant, you’ll need a container or pot that will hold at least five gallons of soil. Make sure your pots have drainage holes. The soil you use should be a high-quality potting or raised bed garden mix. Watermelon vines thrive in loose, aerated soil like you’ll find in a good organic mix.
Watermelon planted in shady areas will either produce fruit with poor flavor quality or no fruit at all. For best results, find a location for your crop that gets direct sunlight for eight or more hours daily.

Watermelon varieties that produce smaller fruits are the best selections for container gardening. They include:

• Watermelon ‘Sugar Baby’ – compact plant produces small round melons with red flesh, small black seeds and dark green skin.
• Watermelon ‘Crimson Sweet’ – disease-resistant plant produces extra sweet melons with red flesh, small black seeds and striped skin.
• Watermelon ‘Jubilee’ – traditional super sweet melons with red flesh, black seeds and striped skin.
• Watermelon ‘Moon & Stars Yellow’ – oval melons with yellow flesh, white seeds and unusual deep green skin with yellow speckles.
• Watermelon ‘Early Moonbeam’ – compact plant produces charming round melons with yellow flesh, black seeds and striped skin.
• Watermelon ‘Jade Star’ – super sweet round melons with deep red flesh, black seeds and dark green skin.
• Watermelon ‘Mini Love’ – compact plant with small round striped melons, red flesh with black seeds.

Planting Watermelon in Pots

The first thing to know about planting watermelon in pots is that you should always start them from seeds. Young watermelon plants have very tender roots that are easily damaged when transplanted. When getting ready to plant your watermelon seeds, pay attention to the length of the seeds.

You’ll want to plant them in a hole that is around three times deeper than the seed’s length. Plant three seeds per container, each in its own hole. When the seedlings appear and are doing well, thin the plants, leaving only the healthiest one in each pot.

Don’t plant watermelon seeds outdoors until the last frost date for your area has passed. If you want to get an early start on the growing season, you can leave your seeded containers indoors until it’s safe to move them outside.
Another option is to start your watermelon seeds indoors in small biodegradable peat pots, then move them to their larger outdoor containers after the frost danger has passed. This type of transplanting will not damage the roots because you’ll be planting the entire peat pot containing your seedling in the larger container. Peat pots decay, adding nutrients to the soil.

How to Grow Watermelons in a Small Space

To grow watermelons in a small space, you sometimes need to do a bit of engineering. Installing a trellis is a good solution. As your plants grow, train them by intertwining the vines into your trellis. Also, even the smaller watermelon varieties produce heavy fruit. You may need to provide the melons with some support as they mature on the vine.

You can make watermelon hammocks out of materials that stretch, like old t-shirts, plastic mesh or hosiery. Tie the ends of the material to the trellis on either side of the melon, then rest the fruit in the middle. As the melon grows and becomes heavier, the material stretches with it and provides continuous support.

Treatment for diseases and pests

Watermelon is a heat-loving plant, but otherwise it is completely unpretentious. With proper care, it rarely gets sick or is attacked by pests. Most often, in amateur melon growing, even no spraying is required; in large farms, of course, preventive treatments are carried out.

To prevent possible diseases (rot, spotting, powdery mildew, anthracnose), for example, such well-known drugs as Fundazol or Decis, as well as traditional Bordeaux liquid, are used. Each of them is capable of destroying certain pathogens, and if necessary, you should carefully study the instructions.

Watermelon has few pests. The most common are melon aphids, wireworms, and various mites. To scare away most of them, it is enough to spray watermelons with products based on garden plants or simple household preparations.
So, against aphids, infusions of tobacco dust or wood ash (with small additions of laundry soap) help well.

Wireworms and leaf-eating caterpillars are collected by attracting them to sweet baits placed in small holes: sweetened infusions of garlic, mustard, wormwood, hot pepper, tomato tops.

Harvest and storage

When the crop approaches the ripening stage, the question arises: when should the watermelons be cut? After all, the fact is that fully ripe berries are very poorly stored, and if you want to eat a delicious watermelon right from the garden, you have to wait until it becomes as tasty as the variety allows.

Those watermelons that have not yet reached the so-called first stage of maturity are also poorly stored. Of course, until you cut a watermelon, you will not know exactly what it is inside: it happens that even the most experienced melon growers make mistakes. On the cut, everything is simple: if the color of the pulp and seeds corresponds to the varietal characteristics, the watermelon is ready.

A slightly unripe specimen (the flesh is lighter than normal) could reach full ripeness and gain sugar during storage. But you will not cut berries in the garden!

There are several signs of ripeness:

• when the watermelon ripens, the matte surface of the peel turns into a shiny one;
• the crust should be firm and not pierced by light pressure with a fingernail;
• in a fully ripened watermelon, the stalk becomes dry;
• a good sign is a yellow spot where the watermelon was in contact with the ground or bedding;
• if you knock on a watermelon, then the ripening specimens make a ringing sound. Muted tones – in fully ripe and, conversely, green (well, it’s not so difficult to distinguish them from each other).