Do you need to pinch off the tips when growing bitter melon?

Bitter melon is a common vegetable in daily life, often eaten to lose weight, reduce internal heat and so on, and it is generally more popular in summer. So do you need to pinch off the tips when growing bitter melon?

1. Do you need to pinch off the tips when growing bitter melon?

Bitter melon needs tip pinching when grown. Generally, after the bitter melon vines grow and climb onto the trellis, pinch off all the weak branches, diseased branches and non-fruiting branches on it, keeping only 2 side vines on the main vine. In addition, no fruit should be kept below 50 cm on the main vine, so the female flowers below 50 cm should be removed.

2. How do you build a trellis for bitter melon?

When the seedlings grow to about 20 cm, a trellis needs to be built to guide the vines. There are two ways to build the trellis: a flat shed trellis and an A-frame trellis. A flat shed trellis has good ventilation and airflow, bears many fruits and gives high yields. Flat shed trellises are further divided into connected multi-bay flat shed trellises and separate-bay flat shed trellises. For a connected multi-bay flat shed trellis, usually a wooden stake is set every 3-4 m in the melon rows, and small bamboo poles, small wooden sticks or nylon netting are used on top to connect the stakes of the whole field into one piece, with the top of the shed about 2 m above the ground; for a separate-bay flat shed trellis, usually every two rows of melons form one shed, with a shed height of 1.5-2 m. The trellis must be built firmly in every case to avoid collapse from wind, which would damage the melon seedlings and affect yield. In the early stage, pay attention to manually tying the vines to help the melon vines climb onto the trellis. After the bitter melon climbs onto the trellis, no fruit should be kept below 50 cm on the main vine, and the female flowers should be removed to help overall development. After the main vine has set 6-7 fruits steadily, pinch off the growing tip while leaving 5-6 leaves, and at the same time remove the other secondary and tertiary vines.