After a number of years where I did not make a good effort to grow watermelons, this year I got a nice crop planted in Clark County, Indiana USA. New plastic in about a 50 foot by 20 foot plot was used. Eight hills planted with about 35 plants growing. The vines were growing great and the due to all the leaf coverage it was hard to tell how many melons there were going to be. It appeared that 20 pound melons were already forming by the beginning of August and my past crops did not mature till mid to late September. I was getting excited that I might have 40+ lb melons in September!
All my hopes were dashed when disaster struck. The leaves in the middle of the patch started to wilt soon the entire middle was dropped. Within the week almost all the leaves in the patch were brown or wilting exposing a lot of melons (possibly 50 or so). I picked two in the middle of the dead zone to see how far along they had gotten. They were a reddish-pink and had relatively large seeds. They were slightly sweet and were edible once refrigerated. The largest weighed a little over 16 pounds and the other 11 pounds.
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