This year we are growing some watermelons in our greenhouse. The seeds took a long time to germinate, but once they started growing, they grew very fast. Each day I would go to the greenhouse and you could see how much they had grown, with the vines reaching higher every day and we would have to detangle them from the other plants. I decided to take a time lapse to see the growth and motion of these plants. This was done in the greenhouse with the door closed and no fans, so there isn’t any wind blowing things around in there. I expected the vine’s tendrils to move around as they search for something to grip onto, but not for the whole thing to move this much. This was shot over 4 hours, with one picture every 60 seconds.

A watermelon blossom.

The first melon on July 14th.

The melons themselves also grew very fast, sometimes up to 4 or 5 cm a day! These photos were from July 18 and 19.

August 27th.

We had heard that you can tell when a watermelon is ripe when the little tendril immediately above it starts to dry up.

So here is our first watermelon in late August. It was 57.5 cm in diameter, and weighed 3.25 kg (7 lbs, 2.4 oz).

It wasn’t quite as red as we expected it to be on the inside, and we maybe could have left it on the vine for another week or so. However, it was still delicious!