Colorado Red Seeded Citron Melon x Watermelon Hybrids

[Gilbert Fritz]

Those citron patterns look like the patterns I got in my patch.

[Andrew Barney]

Sounds like a good plan.  Were you also growing those tiny tomato sized watermelon seeds? How are those watermelons doing?

[S.Simonsen]

The janosik are pretty small seeded but I didn't have any on hand with smaller seed. I am happy with the seed sizes I have as I prefer to spit seeds out and larger ones are easier to manage.

[Andrew Barney]

Planted out my watermelons and hybrids for this season! I think Simon or someone from Australia sent me some janosik or citron seeds that I seem to have misplaced. (Sorry about that! Please send them again!). But otherwise should be an interesting year!

I didn't water them. Just planted seeds.  But forecast says it will rain and snow and sleet and rain the next 4 days,  and it's been super hot here lately.  So I expect them to come up fast when they want to and do well.

I decided to plant them in "hills" this year and try not to over crowd them. About 8 seeds per hill. I may thin them out if I decide to.

This is my list:
Andrews land race (domestic)
"Sugar water"
Yellow-sweet-bitter (flesh)
1st yellowish flesh hyb.
2nd yellowish flesh hyb.
Yellow spot 1(rind)
Yellow spot 2 (rind)
Yellow-when-ripe hyb. (Rind)
Gold-in-gold domestic
Good? Orange-fleshed (domestic)
Andrew's land race (domestic)


26 pound watermelon (gilbert)

Long Yellow (Joseph's yellow fleshed Charleston grey)

[Andrew Barney]

I tried adding this project to the experimental farm network. So feel free to join it there if your involved and want to join it there!

https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/group/24

[Dominic J]

Me and a few other locals are starting a participatory plant breeding project to develop two new watermelon varieites. One of the target varieties would  be a citron cross, so I'd love to participate! I got some citron seeds from GRIN, but they don't seem very red (do they lose color with age?) but starting with selected specimens would probably be even better. I'm in Canada, so we are also crossing that with small short-season varieties and cold resistant germplasm.

[Andrew Barney]

Me and a few other locals are starting a participatory plant breeding project to develop two new watermelon varieites. One of the target varieties would  be a citron cross, so I'd love to participate! I got some citron seeds from GRIN, but they don't seem very red (do they lose color with age?) but starting with selected specimens would probably be even better. I'm in Canada, so we are also crossing that with small short-season varieties and cold resistant germplasm.

Cool! Yeah send me a PM or email with your address and I'll send you some F3 / bee pollinated back cross seeds! I have plenty to share. Red seeds do seem to fade over time, but I also have seed variability between different red seeded varieties. I have yet to see red seeds reemerge as black is very dominant.

[Andrew Barney]

So I haven't updated this thread much this year because my own crop did not do the best. But that does not mean this project is dead.

I tried to select and plant the seeds this year only from the ones with traits that seemed desirable (especially for eating). I think I planted about 10-12 "strains". I'll try to come back and edit this post with the names if i haven't already posted.

But anyway,  yeah,  so my plans mostly failed as most of them failed to thrive at all. My corn crop did fantastic which was planted as an afterthought rather than the main project ironically. But as it turns out the strongest "strain" continued to grow and set fruit regardless of the poor conditions. A testament to good genetics I would think. I still have plenty of backup seed from the large population from last year,  so even if I had a complete crop failure I would have been fine. A good reason to only plant 50% of your seed!

But I've heard this project in Germany and Australia? Might be doing well this season. So in other ways by sharing my seed far and wide ive hedged my bets. Hopefully they will post pictures and updates soon too. More members are joining the project on the Experimental Farm Network.

-Andrew

[ImGrimmer]

They were doing (or better still doing) fine. Most plants grow very vigourous despite being more or less neglected. They are late in bloom. Later than domestic types. But are ripe now at the same time like the domestic types.
5 or 6 plants have fruits and 2 of them are the biggest ones I had so far. Nearly around the size of an organic grown watermelon from the market. Around 7,9 inch or 20cm in diameter
So far I ate only 1 unripe fruit. It was edible like a sweet cucumber. Very nice. Would be a good cucumber-like vegetable.

I have several russian watermelons which have fruits as well. But they are smaller and plants are less vigourous. But still good plants.
One plant of the volunteer strain from Ferdzy was very precocious. I picked the fruit weeks ago. An other plant is setting fruit now and is still healthy. Sadly it is too late for fruit. It started to grow when the heat and drought was over. It seems to thrive better in cooler weather.

[Andrew Barney]

They were doing (or better still doing) fine. Most plants grow very vigourous despite being more or less neglected. They are late in bloom. Later than domestic types. But are ripe now at the same time like the domestic types.

Cool. Thanks for the grow report!
They do seem to flower later but fruit seems to grow faster.

[Andrew Barney]

With nearing frost I called it the end of the season and harvested all [citron x watermelon] hybrids. The citron rind pattern is pretty apparent this year. I may try cutting into the yellowest rind to see if it has domestic flesh, but ideally I'd like to breed for that trait on the surface to be more yellow when more ripe with a domestic sweet flesh.

What throws a wrench into all this is the delayed ripening genes from the citron melons. It may take several weeks or months for them to be at peak ripening even though a domestic would be ripe now.

[Andrew Barney]

Another photo

[Andrew Barney]

And a third. All the same,  just from different angles or distance.

[ImGrimmer]

I picked the last fruits yesterday

[Andrew Barney]

I opened up the last citron like fruits I grew this summer around Christmas / New Years. I think if trying to breed for winter storage melons this is the best way to breed / evaluate them for storage traits.

All three were white fleshed I believe. Two had relatively high amounts of hard flesh with pectin,  though not as much as a pure citron melon. The one with the smallest seeds (domestic watermelon small seed size) was fairly soft. It also measured the highest amount of brix sugar content at 2%. The others measured less. One of them had an unusual seed coat color / pattern. Redish-pink  seeds with the black mottled covering on top.