Beijing uses melon pads to solve the "two-sided melon" problem
"The melon pads you developed are really great, the melons sell especially well, and all my family's melons have sold out." Zhu Jun, a melon farmer from Xiaozhubao Village in Shunyi District, Beijing, was so happy he could not stop grinning the moment he saw the technicians from the Municipal Agricultural Technology Extension Station.
The reporter walked into the greenhouse of another melon farmer, Zhu Yongheng. His family still had a bed of late-planted pick-your-own mini watermelons, and each melon had a transparent plastic sheet placed under it, with slightly raised edges around it, and each watermelon lay comfortably inside.
Chen Yanli, an agronomist at the Agricultural Technology Extension Station, said that the mini watermelons grown in greenhouses in Shunyi currently use ground-crawling cultivation, and yellow patches easily appear on the shaded side. In the middle and late stages of growth, each watermelon normally has to be manually "turned" so that both sides of the fruit receive light evenly, thereby reducing the rot rate, but "turning the melons" is time-consuming and labor-intensive and easily damages the plants, so most melon farmers do not take such measures, and the price of the watermelons is also lower than that of trellis-grown ones.
In order to increase the income of watermelon growers, the extension station created a new type of melon pad specially for watermelons, thoroughly solving the "two-sided melon" problem in ground-crawling cultivation of facility-grown watermelons. The melon pad also obtained a national patent. It is made of PVC material, and its size was also designed according to the mini watermelon varieties grown; even the small raised bumps on it were designed with the light-receiving and light-reflecting angle in mind.
After pollination is completed and while the plant is setting fruit, the melon pad is placed under the melon. Without "turning the melon," it can isolate the fruit from the ground surface, play a moisture-proof and ventilating role, allow the lower part of the fruit to fully receive sunlight, make the fruit surface color uniform, improve its marketability, and also effectively prevent infection of the watermelon fruit surface by diseases and pests.
Zhu Jun did the math: the new melon pad can be reused, costs 0.4 yuan each, and can be used for at least 5~8 years. About 2400 are used per 1 mu of land, and the cost can be recovered in the same year. Each melon weighs 1.5~2 kg, and each kilogram sells for 0.2~0.3 yuan more than before, generally increasing income by more than 800 yuan per mu.
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