how many melons?

Glad you asked this as I am growing melons for the first time this year too - my plants are tiny so far though, still in little pots. I was just about to get busy with the search button to see what advice I can pick up!

Hessayon says train 4 or 6 shoots along supports or across the ground, wait until you have one fruit on each arm and then pinch out the tip and remove any other young fruit so the plant can concentrate on the 4 or 6 fruit you have left. Not sure how I am going to manage all that with 4 plants sharing a small and wobbly plastic greenhouse with all my toms and things though!

I'm trying melon for the first time in the conservatory. The plants are growing great but no idea what to do next. Conflicting advice everywhere I look. I'm watching this space.

I think I have a plan for my 4 plants, based on Hessayon plus various tips culled from about 30 melon threads on here! (Most of which seemed to be rather risque in parts lol)

The plan is:

First, plant in a bucket full of FYM, with an artificial mulch on top for water retention (apparently blue plastic, specifically blue, works best?!) and a plastic bottle around the stem to prevent neck rot or maybe a plastic bottle upside down in the soil to aid safe watering. They need to stay moist all the time, and to be fed with tom food.

Then:
- add 3 canes around the bucket as a tripod
- pinch out the growing tip once the plants are a bit bigger, to encourage side shoots to grow.
- train a side shoot up each cane and pinch out any extras
- possibly hand pollinate once I get flowers (eek - never done that)
- limit each side shoot to 1 fruit
- for each shoot, once I have a fruit, pinch out that shoot a couple of leaves past the fruit and remove all other fruit or flowers that appear.
- support fruits once (if!) they reach a fair size, with a net or something.

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I will put them all in buckets. I might put two in buckets and two to share a big tub with 4 canes around the edge. It seems if you limit the number of fruit per plant you have a better chance that the fruit will ripen, so I'm happy to go for 2-3 per plant given the limitations of my garden and British weather... I reckon 8 to 12 melons will do us nicely as long as they're not too small!

Another tip I read was to use those cheapo greenhouse shelving units, put melon at the bottom and train side shoots up the legs, so that would be 4 from one plant. I might try that although it wouldn't leave me anywhere to put anything else so maybe not!

Now, this is the part where an expert comes along and tells me what is wrong with my plan before it's too late

I'm at war with a fat snail who invaded my greenhouse and munched 2 melon seedlings grrrrrr
But for the remaining two ( protected by cracked eggshells and salt ) i think the above advice is fab ! - look forward to mine growing - they are in a growbag at mo and I think they are just pondering the growing milarkey.
oh and i read somewhere that a ladies bra is great for supporting the growing fruit - no pun intended but i want melons bigger than my cup size !!

Thanks for the help Demeter. I'm thinking about the bucket of manure in the conservatory Maybe I'll try them outside.

Hm - for planting in a conservatory, my plan may not be suitable