On the cantaloupe plant, after the flower falls off, where can i find the fruit?
Question:i have plenty of flowers that keep falling off, but i have yet to see any fruit. does the fruit come from where the flower has fallen off or from the end of the vine?
Answers:
cantaloupe (and all squash/melons) fruit forms right at the base of the flower. You should notice a swelling of the flower stem and this is the fruit.
the cantaloupe has both male and female flower parts, however pollenation is still required by bees/insects. flowers dropping with no fruit is a sign of lack of pollenating.
The fruit will start growing where the flower fell off. It doesn't just magically appear. Give it a few days.
I'm taking a wild guess. The flowers that are falling off are male. They have the long, straight stem. They're all you're going to see for a few days. The next blossoms have short, fat stems. Those are the females, where to fruit develops.
If the flowers are falling off before they open or while they still appear fresh, they could be falling off due to a disease or some soil condition particularly too dry. In that case, there will be no fruit.
If the flowers open for a time, the fruit will start to form before the petals fall off. In that case, the fruit will appear at the base where the petals joined the stem. Cantaloupes like lots of water while they are forming fruit; however, if you give them too much the melons will be bigger and less sweet. You should mulch with straw to lower the risk of the fruit rotting on wet soil. Lengthen the period between waterings once the fruit is about the size of your fist. At that point, I recommend no more than once a week if you don't get rain.
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