My watermelon's future uncertain...

[strantor]

My watermelons did very well when I planted them. The plants grew fast and big and very green and healthy looking. They flowered, grew melons, and maybe in the span of 1 week starting when the melons were tiny, my melons grew to about softball size. then I started getting some kind of disease on the leaves and melons stopped growing. the disease got worse and worse, and the leaves were turning brown, shriveling up, and falling off. The melons remained healthy looking but did not grow. It has been weeks, same size. Now the plants are growing new vines out of the same, old, bad looking vines. The new vines look very healthy and are flowering. I picked a couple of the watermelons and tried them. Despite being softball size, they are ripe, and taste like watermelons.

Here is a pic of the new healthy growth on the old unhealthy vines:

Here is a pic of the melons I picked:

Do the new vines have a chance of success or will they likely contract the same disease and die?

Are these possibly just a small variety of melons which reached full mature size?

What can I do to prevent disease on the new vines?

Should I pick the rest of the melons which are no longer growing, and cut off all the old unhealthy vines?

 

[digitS']

They look like they may be a small variety like Sugar Baby which may be a good choice for a container.

I am curious about the size of the container and the number of plants that are in it.

Container growing is tough for me because of the limited amount of soil. Lots of difficulties can stem from that.

Steve

 

[strantor]

Here's a pic of the containers. I don't know what size they are, but they are about as high as my truck tires. I estimate they are about 20gal.

 

[digitS']

The plants seem to be really in there tight. I keep the melon/cucumber hills at 3 plants each. It would probably be better to only have 2 since they are often fairly close together in a garden bed. This, of course, is in the open garden and not in a container.

You may have to be happy with small-sized fruit if there are a good number of plants in your container.

It would be best to remove the foliage that is dying, I am sure.

Steve

 

[strantor]

yeah the tomatoes were way too many in there. (that was an old pic) I cut them all down but 3. I believe there are 5 watermelon plants growing out of the pot. Next year they will be in the ground. I'll call this a lesson learned.