question on watermelons and cantaloupes

Do you put anything under your melons to keep them from touch ing the ground until their ripe? so they don't rot or get bugs etc.... if so what do you use?

I have had this problem with cantalopes, especially with smooth thin skinned ones like Haogen and used whatever came to hand. Usually small blocks of quarter inch plywood or wood paneling. I have used the plastic bags from the grocery store in a pinch. Here, with this Georgia sand I don't have the problems so I let them lie on the ground. Back in the New River Valley, I even resorted to growing them on black plastic, to prevent rot.

thanks farmerdill.

kathy

i have seen pictures of people using coffee cans, but with the heat we have here, I haven't tried it, only hay or straw...

we used hay under the watermelons last year, but we still turned them every once in a while, they don't rot as bad as the cantelope do. I'm thinking of a block of wood, say 1x6 about 5 in long, my husband is a carpenter and is alway sbring wood home, better g et to looking to see if there's any wood out there we can use.

I had to put my cantelopes in the bottom half of gallon milk jugs with holes in the bottom to keep the "dang" tortoises away last year :)

kathy_ann, how goes the woodchopping and melon raising?