The recovered watermelon plants. There were only stems and a few leaves left when the aphids finally left them alone. They’ve made a nice comeback!

I’m glad to report that our watermelon plants managed to recover after the aphid attack a couple of months ago. It took a while, but they have started growing new, healthy leaves, and the vines are doing their best to get over the rim of the pot that the plants are growing in.

As usual, I’ve been an anxious “parent”, watching all the buds that develop, on the lookout for female flowers. And there have been several. Most don’t get past the tiny half-centimetre diameter before the buds abort.

One of the early female watermelon flowers in bloom.

A couple raised our hopes when they bloomed, but the mini fruits were quite small and green. The latest one, though, had my hopes rather high, because the miniature fruit at the base of the female flower was the largest we’ve seen so far, at just about a centimetre “big”. It even looked like a tiny watermelon, with proper striped rind and all!

I really thought it had successfully set fruit because the tiny fruit stayed on the stem for a few days, and the stem holding it remained strong and healthy-looking. Alas, though… the fruit started to turn yellow and eventually aborted.

The watermelon fruit flower that had my hopes so high. Just look at that miniature fruit!

I’m not even sure if watermelons can grow in our climate, so it will be interesting to keep watching the plants. I expect the plants to start running rampant, so maybe I’ll just leave it to nature to (hopefully) surprise us sometime in the future with a fruit or more.

© 2013 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.