Melon #3 Golden Queen
Observations
Comparing to the Japanese and French cultivars, this Thai Golden Queen Melon has pretty bushy vines and they don't seem to be very particular on pruning. As long as the vines are well ventilated, they seem to be ok with it.
We are new to this cultivar, hence really do not know how best to handle it. We pruned it just like the Japanese melon since the literature is more readily available. We managed to get one good size, great tasting fruit per vine but we feel they may not need to go by the one fruit, one vine principle.
This has been shortlisted to go on second round and some adjustments will be done. Will add on once round 2 has concluded.
Journey Of Growth
We used Golden Queen melon seeds from Chai Tai Thailand. The seeds germination rate is closed to 80% for a new seed pack. The price performance of this melon is pretty good.
It follows typical sprout pattern, most seeds sprouted on day 5 to 7. The seedlings are ready for transplant by Week 2.5-3. We use 10cm pot and put about 3 seeds to one pot.
The planting media are treated with goat poos and water with soil enzymes #AGNLite one week before transplant. Soil enzyme is again applied when mass flowering (week 8) and when fruits are growing rapidly after successful pollination (week 9-10)
Most vines started mass flowering with female flowers from week 8 onwards. Good pollination window is between week 8 to 9 from seeds. Good and healthy female flowers appeared from node 18 onwards. Vine length from surface of planting bag to the mass flowering nodes (node 18) is about 1.2 to 1.5m length for this cultivar.
Journey Of Pollination
For this cultivar, it is interesting to see healthy side vines from almost every node from node 18 onwards.
Unlike what is common in previous 2 melon where you usually see one female flower forming directly from the node, this cultivar has long side vines on almost every node after node 18. Female flowers formed on first few nodes of the side vines and not on the node of the main vine. Those circles in yellow above show all the fruit/female flowers on the side vines
Like the rest, if the flower is pollinated successfully, 3 to 5 days after pollination, there will be one dominant flower that will have the fruit double in size and growing very rapidly.
There are lots of female flowers for this cultivar, however the pollination success rate is not very high, only about 60% or 1 in 2 female flowers will not form despite manually pollinating it diligently with at least 3 male flowers. We really run out of male flowers. Hence, for this melon, every effort is put in to pollinate as many female flowers that the male flowers can keep up with.
Pruning And Trellis Support
The trellis height must be at least about 2.4m height if you intend to have straight visible vine for easy spotting of nodes and melons. if you can accept curly vines all over, then it is fine. As long as they get to spread out and catch the sun. Its mass flowering nodes are much further away from the main stem, node 18 onwards instead of 8 of the Japanese melon.
We removed all the side vines below the successfully pollinated fruit. Uniquely to this, we pruned the side vine after the successful pollinated fruit too. The rational is so that the nutrients will go towards the fruit instead of growing the side vine. We will experiment a bit on this next round and update the blog when it is done.
The tip of the main vine is pruned off once we have at least 25 to 30 good leaves for the plant to perform good photosynthesis for plant food production. If you have space, can keep a few side vines above the pollinated fruit. Just so they can also provide more leaves for food production.
Ripening Journey
#FruitsAppearance
The fruit takes about 5.5 to 6 weeks from pollination to be fully ripen. It will need support from week 2 onwards. The skin is smooth for this cultivar and it started off looking pale green in color. By week 4 after pollination, the skin will change almost totally to bright yellow color.
The vine will wilt once the fruit is ready for harvest, it can happen overnight. The picture below shows the wilted vine. The fruit however will not dislodge from the vine like the Japanese and French Melon. It will stay on the dry vine as long as the support can hold them.
We did keep a second fruit for some vines. But they are all less than ideal, either odd shape in the picture below or vine died prematurely eventually, and the fruits sweetness compromised. Will need more study into this.
The final fruit has bright yellow, smooth outer skin, bright orange fresh, sweet and juicy, the fresh is very crunchy. Average size is 1kg.
If you chill and serve immediately after harvest, it will be very crunchy. We managed to keep the fruits in the fridge for another 3 weeks and they stay fresh pretty well.
Uniquely For This
#IAmUnique
We love this cultivar, pretty, sweet, juicy and crunchy. It doesn't have the netted outlook and the fragrance of the expensive Japanese melon. But the sweet crunchy taste is simply delicious.
The vine of this cultivar is pretty bushy but not messy. It has many side vines hence you need to prune it regularly to keep it in shape. The trellis needs to have the right height to allow the vine to stretch properly.
Remember, it doesn't dislodge from the vine and it has no fragrance. So a good indicator for harvest is even bright yellow skin and the right fruit age from day of pollination ( 5.5 to 6 weeks). So do label your fruit.
The vine will wilt but so does plants who are under pests attacked. We have a vine that suffered from mildew attack and died prematurely. The fruit has not change to bright yellow skin totally, still has patches of pale green on skin as shown below.
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