Winter Melon Harvest!

The weather is turning cold in Southern California. The days top out at around 70 degrees and at night it gets down to below 50 degrees.

My Winter Melon plants are starting to die, so it is time to cut down the vines and harvest all of the Winter Melons.

I planted the Winter Melon plants over 8 months ago (see this blog entry).

I harvested some of Winter Melons periodically (see this blog entry), but the bulk of the Melons I left on the vines.

The picture above shows Winter Melons hanging from several vines. I built a trellis using steel garden stakes that I tied with nylon rope to a Metal Fence that I have in my backyard. The vines attached themselves to the stakes. The stakes are strong enough to support several Winter Melons. Each of the Winter Melons in the picture are over 15 pounds each.

The picture below shows all of the Winter Melons that I harvested today.

There were 23 Winter Melons of various shapes and sizes. The ones that are still Green are immature and will need to be eaten quickly. The ones with the white powdery substances will keep for many months.

The Winter Melons in this year's harvest are much bigger than the ones that I harvested last year (see this blog entry). Last year, I grew 15 Winter Melon plants and this year, I only grew 6 plants. This gave the plants more sunlight and space to grow than the plants I grew last year.