Most People Plant Watermelons WRONG — Do This Instead

Lots of gardeners lose their watermelon yields before the season even starts because they plant them wrong. They plant them too close together, they put them in poor soil, and they transplant them wrong and wonder why the vines are so small and the melons are such a disappointment. Today I'm going to show you exactly how I do it so that I can get explosive growth, the vines look nice, and the watermelons are huge. If you're new here, I'm Bill Brown and I have been growing watermelons for a long time and even competitive watermelons as well. Whether you're going competitive or the smaller melons just to eat, if you follow these methods you're going to have a strong plant and you're going to have some nice melons. Let's go ahead and get started. The first thing you need to do is pick the correct location. Before you drop a seed or put a transplant in the ground, you need to make sure that the plant gets at least eight hours of sunlight. If you can get more that's even better. So come out in your yard and look where the sun goes and see how long it stays and then you make your decision where you put your plant at because that is going to increase the size of your plant and therefore you're going to increase the size of your melons. Trust me. Soil preparation is next and this is one of the biggest differences between average growers and great growers because watermelons are heavy feeders and if you understand that you know you got to feed them a lot and feed your soil. I have been feeding my soil even before the season has started and then I'm still going to get them give them some more so that my plants can grow big and healthy all throughout and get me some big melons, at least one giant. All right so what I'm doing is I already put some fish at the bottom of my soil down here on my bed and I don't like to disturb the bed but I did this last year and it worked out great. I got a 69 pound watermelon so I said hey let me try that again but you got to understand your soil needs to be nice and loose and I'm glad that I dug down there because my soil was kind of compact so what I did was I wiggled it a little bit like this and I got it nice and loose and the reason why we want it to be nice and loose because your roots have to travel all the way down and you don't want them nice and compact but what I'm doing now is adding some more black cow to it and I always like using it and this whole bed was made of black cow last year so I'm just going to add some more bags in it and once I get this spread out I'm going to put some more fertilizer on top of this. Like I said I got to feed it and I got one fertilizer that I'm going to show you at planting. This is a secret fertilizer. I didn't use it before but I know it works. Speaking of fertilizer I'm using tomato tone. I do use some other things out here. I'll put a link in the description because I have been doing this before the season as well. Now remember when I said when I plant I got a fertilizer that I haven't used but I'm pretty sure it's gonna work because I use the liquid fertilizer from the same company and you should see my tomato plants. I wasn't even trying to get them that big. It made it hard for me to plant so if they liquid fertilizer did that I know the granular fertilizer is going to be off the chain. You wait and see and I'm going to use that liquid fertilizer for my watermelons as well so that should be something to see. Now all I got to do is mix this in. Now if you're using some of the fertilizers that I'm using some people ask me well how much do you use. You can look on the bag and it'll give you the specifics but for me you see what I did. I just eyeballed it. I've been doing this for a while until I feel like just like I'm cooking I just got got this feel and so just like I feel like I'm gonna grow a giant watermelon bigger than that 69 pounder. So just look at the labels and you'll be good to go. I want to take a minute to talk about one of the greatest watermelon growing guys around. Whether you're a beginner or you're an advanced like me there's something in here just for you. I go over some of the most common issues watermelon growers face like how to deal with the squash bug if you have cracked melons or if you have only male flowers and much more. Everything is in here and I talk about how to grow large watermelons y'all. It is packed with a lot of information. If you would like to purchase this I'll put the link in the description below and you will have this forever even when I make upgrades it'll be yours. Alright back to the video. One of the most common mistakes I see is with improper spacing. Yeah that's right that used to be me all day long when I first started growing melons. That's why I never could get a melon grown. Alright so you want to make sure that they're spread out so that they're not competing against one another. If you have them all bunched together they're going to be competing for nutrients and then you're going to get a smaller plant and then you'll get you're going to get an even smaller watermelon and we don't want that do we? Not me. Alright so just make sure you are spread them out properly. Now when I have them in rows I plant mine at least two two feet apart. Alright so this melon is going to have this bed by itself. Alright this bed is from Quick Tent. They are sponsoring the video for today so if you're in need of a raised bed I'll put the link down in the description so you can get one just like this because this is going to be the winning plot for a giant melon. Alright so just keep that in mind spread them out so that they're not competing and you're one step closer to growing a giant melon. Now let's actually plant this watermelon plant. Alright so all I'm gonna do is dig out my planting hole. So once I do that I want to make sure I don't bury this too deep. Alright once again just like tomato plants they are not alike. Tomato plants you can plant the stem all the way down. Watermelons do not like that. So when it comes out of the pot that's where exactly I want it to go. Alright so let me be nice and careful. So I got that out before I put that in there. Alright so I got my secret fertilizer. I got the back turn. I'm gonna go ahead and show you what it is. This right here is from Neptune's Harvest and it's the crab and lobster shells. Alright so I'm gonna open it out. Hold tight now. I'm gonna show you why. I'm gonna bring you up close so I can see why I'm using this. Alright this right here is a game changer and that liquid fertilizer got my my plants in them tiny cups like this got them looking like trees. So I can't wait to see what this do. Alright so if you look carefully and I know it's going to be upside down this right here says 17 percent calcium. Alright why that is big why that is big is because you know when we are planting our watermelon plants and we get those nice watermelons to start they're about this size and then at that the end it gets that black end right that is the worst feeling. And so the calcium that's a calcium deficiency. So they got 17 percent in here so once it breaks down your plant is going to be getting that calcium. And I'm gonna provide other ways to get calcium as well but that's a straight game changer because we don't want that black end rot because that's gonna mess up your entire melon and we don't want it. So that's why I'm using it and so now I got the fertilizer in there and all I'm gonna do is back fill. I'm gonna make sure I don't have it too deep because like I said we don't want to uh mess with the uh stem. Now if you want that fertilizer I'll put a link in the description as well but guess what I got a discount code for it and so you can get more savings but I am going to use every benefit I can get to grow a giant. You're gonna grow us a giant right? I know you are. Alright so I'm so excited I love this time so can't you tell? Once you finish planting your watermelon plant you want to make sure that you water it. I've got my watering can over there I gotta go get it but you put the water around it so it can close all the air pockets out and you want to make sure that while you just put it in there and it's getting used to this new environment you want to keep it moist because that's going to help with the growth of this plant. That is critical and keeping your plant watered that is another way to stop the blossom end rot end rot excuse me because if you're not watering on a consistent basis even if you have calcium in your soil then it's going to tie up the calcium so just remember that you've got to make sure you water consistently and especially if you're in a raised bed because they're hot they're elevated you need to make sure you put even more water on. I water these more than my in-ground garden just giving you the watermelon game y'all. What I like to do next is I like to mulch around my plant and matter of fact I mulch around the entire bed because that's going to lock moisture in once I water it in and then it's going to keep the soil temperatures it's going to regulate the soil temperatures and that's what I want and another thing is when these when the organic matter breaks down guess what I'm feeding the soil and I'm feeding my plant all right so it's more than one reason why I like to add mulch because it is fertilizer when it breaks down can't beat that I'm telling them all my secrets well maybe not secrets but hey I'm telling you everything that I do and so that's how I get to grow them big ones. If you get this planting stage right then you're setting yourself up for a strong foundation for your watermelon season strong start strong vines strong pollination and ultimately hopefully that's going to encourage a bigger and better melon. Planting watermelons isn't complicated but the details they matter. If this has helped you out hit the subscribe button because we're going all in on watermelon season and if you want my full step-by-step watermelon growing guide grab it below and I'll help you from planting all the way to harvest. I'll see you in the next video.