TRAINING HOUSE MELONS. 211 
September 10; first fruit picked December 6; crop all 
harvested for Christmas.* If a crop is desired on the 
first of November, the seeds should be sown from the 
middle to the 25th of July. Fig. 72 (page 210) shows 
the size of a good melon plant as it leaves a 4-inch pot 
for the bench. It is very important that the plants should 
not become pot-bound, nor stunted in any other way. It 
is only strong, pushing plants which give satisfactory 
results. 
Training.— The plants are ‘‘stopped’’—the tip of the 
leader taken off—as soon as they become established in 
the bench. This pinching-in is practiced for the purpose 
of setting the plant at once into fruit-bearing, and to 
make it branch into three or four main shoots. All the 
weak or ‘“‘fine’? shoots are removed as fast as they ap- 
pear, so that the plant does not expend its energy in the 
making of useless growth. The three or four main vines 
or arms are trained divergently upon a wire trellis, and 
as soon as a shoot reaches the top of the trellis—4 or 5 
feet—it is stopped. Some growers prefer to have a 
leader 4 or 5 feet long, and only two laterals and of 
about the same length as the leader. The trellis is 
made simply of light wire, strung both horizontally and 
vertically, with the strands about a foot apart in each 
direction. To these wires the vines and fruits are tied 
with raffia, or other soft, broad cord. It must be re- 
membered that the fruit is borne along the main 
branches, and that all small or ‘‘blind’’ growths from 
the main stem and branches should be nipped out as 
soon as they start. The fruits should hang free from the 
vine, never touching the ground. It will generally be 
necessary to hang them to a wire, as shown in Fig. 73 
(page 212), by making a sling of raffia, or resting them 
*It should be said that the forcing season at Ithaca is unusually 
cloudy, and that, consequently, these dates of maturity are somewhat 
later than they may be in sunnier regions. 
I5 FORC. 
