Mindi Macintosh udder Foreman dar the gardening um and dirty nineteen University and today I'm going to show you how to steak melons now this process should be setup when you plant your seed or you initially plant your melon plants but just for demonstration I'm going to show you on a plant that's a little more mature I have set up two Stakes at the end of my raised bed and I have ran string in between the two stakes now you can attach fencing material you can attach menagerie of things if you have very tall vines you can actually put a board going across here and have your strings going down this way versus going horizontally so you just kind of have to play with what you have in the type of plant material you're dealing with once you have your trellis material up the process of staking a watermelon is very simple and melons typically do not have to be tied off because they have natural ties which are called tendrils and you're going to have this tendril wrap around whatever trellis material that you're using whether it's fencing material string and if you notice when you see plant material watermelons cantaloupe other melons grin on the ground these tendrils will attach to anything other plant material post etc that are growing around the area now what do you do about the fruit if you're growing a variety of watermelon or cantaloupe or any type of melon that produces a small fruit you can actually use a nylon sock and this is made from a knee-high or you can cut pantyhose off and what you're going to do is you're just going to place it over the fruits and you're going to secure it to the trellis material either with the knot or some type of garden twine now how this works is it allows sunlight to come in and this stretches as your fruit enlarges and it also breeds and dries very quickly so you don't have to worry about any type of disease problems or your fruit actually rotting because this material is still wet now if you're dealing with a large fruit such as this what you're going to do is you're going to make a hammock and you're going to tie one end off one side of the fruit you're gonna go up underneath the fruit and you're going to tie it off on the other side and you're gonna adjust accordingly if you need to and these are two techniques that will help you secure your fruit to your trellis material and help make your staking of your melons a success so until we meet in the garden again this is the Mindy McIntosh shutter from mend our the garden gnome enter to nineteen University you