Growing Watermelons in a Container

To start, I cannot take credit for this particular project. My Mom actually defied my expectations when she started growing these watermelons. I thought there would be no way you could grow full sized watermelons in medium sized containers. Everyday I see that was wrong. 

She started from seeds, which admittedly I was never that successful at doing, and after a week they started to sprout. She was very much delighted when she saw her first baby sprout since she had never believed she could grow anything herself and she wanted to take a crack at this whole gardening thing with me.  The soil used was regular potting soil.

I knew that eventually it would get too large and consume the whole container, but she insisted they be left alone. And away they go! This is them after a month a half: 

And look what I find growing off the stem, a cute baby watermelon!

Since they were trailing so much I moved them off to side on a piece of uninhabited flower bed. 

The seeds were never started indoors, they were kept in a sunny spot on the back patio. These plants need consistent watering and full sun. Typically if you are going to plant in a container you will need a huge one because of how much they sprawl. But at the end of the day if you’re fine with them sprawling all over the floor then you don’t need a huge space or container. The sure sign your plant is on the right path is if you start seeing blooming flowers. Watermelon plants should should reach maturity around three months. They can actually grow in zones 3 -11, which means can be grown virtually anywhere in the US! It’s been two months since we started the watermelons and this is our progress now:

That’s the only one that seems to be maturing, the other watermelons on the vines are still babies. We moved them to the top of the table because we been having an opossum problem lately. As I said, they grow a little rampant so make sure you have space to let the vines roam free. Other than that they are fairly easy to grow!

UPDATE 4/18/2021 : I meant to update this months earlier, but anyway the watermelon did not grow much bigger than the last one pictured above. We waited another month, but the leaves started dying off and it was still fairly the same size. We then plucked it off and decided to eat it. It was a nice deep red inside and tasted sweet! So in all it was a good watermelon, just 1/4 of the size it should of have been. So can’t say I mastered the art of the watermelon as of yet, but I am currently doing so much needed research on it and will provide a new article regarding this eventually. That’s all and happy gardening!