112 PICTORIAL FBAOTICAL FRUIT GROWING. 



Never having shared his meal, I am unable to say whether his taste is 

 soiand. If the Water Melon of his Icailyard is the Water Melon of our 

 botanical collections, CitruUus vulgaris, then I think we have better material 

 to hand in the many varieties which we possess of the garden Melon, 

 Cuoumis Melo. This plant being a very easy one to cross, hundreds of new 

 varieties are raised annually. Every other gardener one meets has his own 

 Melon, which his eye and palate endow with fabulous virtues, but which 

 never reaches the pinnacle of fame represented by inclusion in a seedsman's 

 catalogue. 



In years gone by Melons were very largely grown on hotbeds, but glass 

 is cheaper nowadays, and consequently most large gardens have their Melon 

 pits — low, sunken structures, with a couple or more of hot water pipes 

 running round them, and a raised floor on which mounds of soil bring the 

 plants close to the glass. Still, Melons may be grown, and well grown, on 

 hotbeds. 



Many gardeners have a belief that Melon seed improves by being carried 

 about for a few months in a waistcoat pocket. Why not a trousers pocket, 

 I should like to know ? The flimsy argument that the seeds would be 

 getting lost through being drawn out with money will not satisfy me. 

 Gardeners are not so reckless in handling their loose cash. Again, I should 

 like to ask where the lady gardener comes in — the one, I mean, who does 

 not wear rationals 1 Is she to pine Melonless because she does not wear a 

 waistcoat? Good Melon seeds should be plump, well rounded, and firm. 

 If the seeds are light, shelly, and hollow, yielding under pressure from the 

 finger tip, I am afraid that you might carry them in your pocket from youth 

 to old age without making plants of them. 



Given one firm, plump, ripe seed in the middle of a 3-inoh pot, plunged 

 in a propagator or on a hotbed, a plant is tolerably certain. When it has 

 made two or three rough leaves (the smpoth seed leaves are not counted) nip 

 off the growing tip in order to encourage a strong break from below. The 

 resulting shoots, to the number of three or four, may be trained to opposite 

 corners of (he frame from the central position which the plant itself 

 occupies, and if stopped at two-thirds the distance, will speedily fill the 

 space with laterals. These will probably show fruit; if not, they may be 

 stopped, and will push fruiting sublaterals. 



Broadly speaking, what is known as the spur system of Vine 

 pruning, which has been described in Chapter XIV., is the best for 

 house Melons, and it has the great- merit of simplicity. A leading 

 shoot is taken up, and side growths ("laterals") are trained from 

 it. It is not often that the strict regularity of Vine training is observed 

 throughout ; in fact, the laterals frequently take a turn and are trained in 

 parallel with the leader, but there the system is — a good one to follow, a 

 bad one to beat. To get successional fruit, remove the flowers on some of 

 the first laterals, and stop these at the third joint. Sublaterals will then 

 form, on which fine fruit will be got. 



The beginner will speedily observe that he has two kinds of flowers on 

 his Melon plants, one having a small protuberance at its base, the other 

 without. This is common, o£ course, to the Cucurbitacese, and is observable 

 in Cucumbers and Vegetable Marrows. It will not take the grower long to 

 arrive at the conclusion that as Nature put two flowers there two are 

 wanted, but that the flower with the protuberance is the one to give the 

 fruit. This is so, but, difliering from Cucumbers, the Melons should be 

 band fer,tili&ed — that is, when the pollen du^it in the plain (lowers is observed 

 (^Coiiilmicd on page 118.) 



