Master seedless watermelon growing techniques to produce high-quality, high-yield watermelons

Seedless watermelon is a triploid watermelon. Its flesh basically contains no fully developed seeds, making it convenient to eat with a crisp, sweet taste, and it is very popular in the market. It is bred by crossing a tetraploid female parent with a diploid male parent. It cannot produce normal seed on its own, so seedling raising and crop management are more demanding than for ordinary watermelons.

Raising seedlings is the first hurdle to growing seedless watermelons well. Triploid seeds have a relatively thick seed coat and weak germination vigor, so before sowing they usually need to be sun-dried, soaked, and nicked, then placed in a warm, humid environment to sprout so that emergence is assured. The seedling stage likes warmth and fears cold, so seedlings are mostly raised in hotbeds or greenhouses in a concentrated way, and transplanted to the field once the seedlings have grown strong.

The pollen of seedless watermelon is basically sterile, so it cannot set fruit on its own; ordinary diploid watermelons must be interplanted in the field in a certain proportion as pollinating varieties. During flowering and fruit set, hand pollination or bee release for pollination should also be used so that the stigmas of female flowers receive enough pollen. Whether pollination is adequate directly affects the fruit-setting rate and the uniformity of the fruit.

For fertilizer and water management, the base fertilizer should be mainly fully decomposed organic fertilizer, combined with an appropriate amount of phosphorus and potassium fertilizer; during the vine-running stage, water should be appropriately controlled to promote root growth, while during the fruit-swelling stage, a balanced water supply must be ensured, as alternating drought and moisture easily causes fruit cracking and hollow heart. At the same time, do a good job of pruning and vine pressing, promptly select and retain fruit at suitable nodes to set the fruit, and concentrate nutrients on high-quality melons so that the melons grow large and uniform.

Many growers report that seedless watermelons have a low germination rate, are difficult to set fruit, or produce deformed or thick-rinded melons. These problems are mostly related to careless sprouting treatment, insufficient allocation of pollinating varieties, and imbalanced water and fertilizer. Grasp the three key links of seedling raising, pollination, and fertilizer and water management, and the results of growing seedless watermelons will generally be quite ideal.