Small-Space Wonder! Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon + Time Lapse
Welcome! In this post, I want to introduce to you this bush variety of watermelon that is simply an excellent addition to your garden and seed collection, especially if you enjoy growing dwarf or bush varieties of fruits and vegetables like I do. Today, I am introducing the Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon. I’ve recorded this as a time-lapse up on YouTube with a few tips along the way…and a few mistakes on my end, but I do hope you enjoy! Do read on further for more detailed information on what I’ve done throughout the video and if you enjoy my content, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, social media, and to the FateWorks Farms YouTube channel for your amazing support!
Seeds & Germination
For this video, I chose to get my Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds over at rareseeds.com. They offer a wide variety of seeds and I do recommend their products overall; go check them out!
You can see from this image that the seeds are waterdrop-like in shape, rounded at the bottom, thinning at the tip and flattening off. They are also spotted in colors of dark brown to streaks of soft gold.
I chose one of these lucky seeds to see the light of my grow tent, sowed, then gave my fully dry container a really good soak so that the roots meet water as they emerge from the seed and travel down and out. I simply kept the soil at a decent moisture level, never letting it dry out all the way and also not waterlogging it.
The single seed I sowed for this run started pushing up out of the soil by the end of Day 3 and was already poking out by the end of Day 5, on its journey to model for the camera as it grew.
Container & Soil
Before thinking about the soil, if what you’re planning to do IS grow in a container, you really want to keep in mind its size and the particular plant that will occupy it. Think about whether the variety of plant that you are growing will need more room to spread its roots, not only to receive ample nutrition, but for water uptake & reserves, as well as stability in certain cases; some plants are real heavy feeders and thirsty altogether, so the size and material of your container plays a huge role in how well your plant grows and how well it is able to be sustained while unattended (because if the soil dries up, it is usually Game Over), until it hopefully produces if it is meant to.
I am mentioning this because I chose to grow this watermelon in a 5 gallon container…I KNOW! What was I thinking?! Even if this IS a bush variety of watermelon, it does not mean that it is to be underestimated. Watermelons need ample root space to be able to grow a nice and healthy fruit for you, so if you ever grow this variety or any watermelon variety, ignore what I did and go for at LEAST a 10 gallon container filled with as much of your preferred soil mix as you can; growing in a 5 gallon container certainly limited the size of my fruit and how often I could go without checking up on this plant to water it. I’ll make sure to size up on my grow container in the future if I need to grow something more demanding, so that I could give each variety a fair chance; on the flip side, I got to learn firsthand what happens when root space is limited for a plant that really needs it…its fruit and growth suffers. I do enjoy testing and pushing a plant’s limits to see what I can get away with. Any chance to learn something new is a win for me.
The container used for this grow was a fabric container that I wrapping in a trash bag to prevent water from leaking all over the grow tent and to prevent evaporation; I could always go for a solid container & bottom tray in the future, but this is what I had on hand, so this is what I ended up using. I do enjoy fabric containers though and they for sure have their unique place in the garden; you can see an example of the ones I tend to use below.
For the soil, I didn’t do anything too complicated, just the usual. I went to Home Depot and got myself a pink bag of Kellogg’s Organic Potting Mix, which I amended with Organic Worm Castings and an Organic Fast & Slow Release Granular fertilizer with beneficial bacteria to enhance the activity of the soil. Then, I just placed about an inch of plain coconut coir as a layer over my potted mix, so that the seed could have a nice fluffy and clean environment to be able to germinate successfully. This last part isn’t necessary of course, but I prefer to do it for these videos especially to increase the chances that it will come up if even just a little.
Watering & Fertilizing
The watering for this plant was rather straight forward; all I made sure to do was check that the soil didn’t dry up entirely, especially while it was growing its fruit. At the same time, I tried to water evenly when needed and all the way through without waterlogging my soil. Also keep in mind that we want to water and fertilize less the closer we get to harvesting a watermelon, and not do it at all a week before harvest. Admittedly, in my rush to get things done, I forgot and even ignored some of these basic rules and my hand might have slipped a bit on the watering a few times (not too bad) and worse, on the fertilizing; it was a rough ride for this plant and its fruit, but they really pulled through as best as they could.
On top of the regular amendments that my soil received as covered in this section, I started weekly to bi-weekly feedings of AgroThrive’s Fruit & Flower as soon as I saw the first true leaf develop; I’d only give the young plant a dilute concentration of it to get it and the soil going without going overboard, only to increase it up somewhat later on, never exceeding the recommended dose. Again, I did not always measure correctly (my bad), but for the regular feedings, its good to first step back and take a look at the leaves and growth of your plant overall and then determine if to fertilize or not and how much. You really don’t have to overdo it with a live liquid fertilizer either, a little goes a really long way, and if your soil is well-amended, even more so. I do love this liquid fertilizer that I use even in the garden outside and I know it for sure kept my soil alive and my plant healthy throughout this grow.
Where I think I really went overboard was on re-amending the soil. Since we are growing in a container, with a heavy-feeding plant at that, we are limited for resources such as root space, water, and nutrients. Considering this, I re-amended the soil more often than I actually needed to a few times and gave it a bit extra “just to make sure.” Well, I encourage you to ignore this pattern of action, especially when it comes to watermelons, and instead of going for the largest fruit you can “pump out,” think about letting your plant and fruit grow slowly and steadily at whatever pace it needs; I also did not put into account the fact that I was pruning off suckers and topping the plant regularly, so it wasn’t consuming nutrients as quickly as if it was just growing wildly non-stop. As a result, you can see at the end of the video how the open fruit had developed a small section that was hollow, most likely from growing too fast; there are other reasons why this, what they call Hollow Heart, could happen, such as poor pollination of the female flower and excessive watering.
To re-amend your watermelon properly, first just put the fertilizer down and breathe… (note-to-self). Check every 3-4 weeks to see the progress of your plant, such as the condition & coloration of all the leaves, especially at the growth tips. If you address that they need a little fertilization love, then top-dress it at that moment and QUICKLY walk away… It is OKAY not to fertilize at all if it doesn’t need it, and once you get the hang of it and with the help of the Internet, you can determine if the plant is lacking something specific and give it just that. I chose to keep it simple for this grow and went for the same Worm Castings and Slow Release Fertilizer that I used to amend my soil at the beginning, sometimes mixing it with just a little bit of potting mix. Then, if I thought the plant needed a touch extra of Magnesium, I could decide to give it some Magnesium Sulfate or not. Again, don’t overdo it like I did by not following these tips properly and you should be fine.
Lighting
In this video, we are growing a watermelon and knowing that we are dealing with a tropical fruit-bearing plant, I know that it is going to need plenty of light in order to thrive. With the grow tent prepped, I began the grow and had the LED light on for 24 hours pre-germination and then followed that with an 18/6 light cycle post-germination, that is 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness; I still want to give my plant some time to rest with a period of darkness each day, though some may choose otherwise. With artificial lighting, it really is up to you! I thought this LED light did well with a watermelon overall, though I would have to compare by replicating this grow setup outside or with a different light under similar conditions and seeing how long it would take to bear and ripen a fruit and what size it would end up being. I could also regrow the same variety or a variety that’s supposed to yield larger fruit under more careful means (container & other…) to compare its performance.
Growth Habit & Upkeep
The Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), as the name implies, is a Bush variety of watermelon; this means that its compact vines make it an amazing variety to incorporate into your garden, especially if you don’t have a lot of space, but still want to grow something delicious, healthy, and rewarding, like a watermelon. I do want to stress, however, to give this plant plenty of root space and soil so that it can grow as freely as possible; your plant will thank you for it and the final fruit will be that much more rewarding.
So, how do we get fruit?…
You can see from this image that some flowers have a bulging immature fruit, to which the petals are attached; these are the female flowers of the plant and what we want to do is to transfer pollen from the open male flowers to the open female flowers. I have another video and post on how to pollinate watermelon flowers in case you want to watch further >>here<<, but you can just use a soft-bristled brush or dab a depetaled male flower onto the female; be thorough, but gentle.
The Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon began flowering for me past day 41 from seed, starting with male flowers.
For this video, I was considering the size of my container and how I wanted most of this plant’s energy to go into producing a single nice watermelon for me, so I kept up with pruning all suckers to just grow one vine. Occasionally, I would top the main vine and then let it regrow through a sucker a bit only to top it again from time to time. Pruning & topping does also help with the plant not drawing up as much water and nutrients from the soil. If you’re growing directly in the ground outside, it is really up to you what you choose to do at that point, so you might just let it go wild!
Other than pruning off suckers entirely (almost?), I’d also remove dead or dying leaves to clean it up and make room for new growth; you can let suckers grow out and then top those suckers to replace older foliage. This keeps your plant photosynthesizing nicely while looking and staying nice and healthy.
Fruit & Taste
This bush watermelon is meant to be a more compacted size when it comes to its vines, and although its fruit tends to also be on the smaller side as compared to other watermelon varieties, I’ve seen them get rather large as well. In this case, the vine was grown in a 5 gallon container and that for sure restricted the size of the fruit; as mentioned, I did try to overcompensate for this by fertilizing a bit more, but I do not recommend doing this at all. Easy does it.
The watermelon ended up a bit larger than the size of my hand, and I was honestly just ecstatic to have gotten to this part in the grow with a fruit to try right in the palm of my hand.
This was more on the personal size type of watermelon and I was hoping that it would be ripe enough because I wasn’t 100% sure when I picked it. I did look for all the signs such as skin webbing, yellowing underneath, sweet smell (I did not notice any at all prior to cutting it open), slowed growth, and hollow sound, but the dry tendril check threw me off this time.
The surefire way to tell that your watermelon is ripe is to check for the tendril closest to the fruit you are trying to harvest. If the tendril is dried up and brown, then it is usually fine to pick at that moment. You might choose to also wait a few days so that the sugars develop further, but I wouldn’t wait much longer than a week and remember to stop watering and fertilizing at least 5-7 days prior to harvest!
Either because of the plant’s bush quality or the small size of the grow container that I chose, the nodes and tendrils on this vine all grew compacted together and it was difficult for me to tell which tendril was the right one, so I waited for all of them to dry. I feel that in waiting, I harvested this fruit a bit too late, which could have certainly affected its taste, but that’s okay for the purpose of this post and video.
I harvested on Day 171 from sowing a single seed of the Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon; an amazing journey!
You can see the fruit cut open in half in this image or at the end of the time lapse video. You can see that this is just a regular red watermelon whose vines just happen to grow more compact. Notice that from trying to overcompensate for the size of the container by fertilizing a bit more, the fruit grew faster than it could handle and part of it was hollow. No big deal in this case since it was just a small section. This is something that could also be caused by overwatering or from poor pollination, but I gather it was just me showing this plant too much love.
Thankfully, the flesh of the fruit was still good, so I will briefly describe my experience below:
- Smell: There wasn’t any hint of a sweet smell prior to cutting the watermelon open, which meant that I could not use that cue to tell if it was ripe or not. Once cut open, however, I could definitely tell that it was indeed a watermelon before my very eyes. Nice sweet watermelon smell.
- Inside Texture: I was worried that the hollowness or harvesting a bit late might have affected the texture, but thankfully it was nice and crisp as a regular freshly harvested watermelon would be…very juicy and enjoyable. My main regret is that I did not let this cool in the fridge prior to trying it! **facepalm**
- Sweetness & Flavor: This fruit tasted like a regular watermelon would, a delicious flavor on that end. It was also nicely sweet, although I will say that it COULD have been sweeter; this, however, is entirely on me since I did not follow proper watering and fertilizing rules at certain points of this grow. It was still an enjoyable fruit to eat and I would for sure recommend this variety.
- Seeds: This watermelon did not have many seeds at all, though overall, seed development was good, which meant that fertilization went mostly well at the very least; not being a seedless watermelon variety, you will have to pick those youngins out and either toss them, eat them, or save them for sowing at a later time.
Saving seeds for a watermelon is SUPER easy. Once you cut open your fruit, you can either pick out or eat and spit out the seeds, keeping the ones that look like they have developed nice and healthy. Then, just dry them fully on the counter before storing them in a container away from light and moisture, awaiting the day for you to place them under a warm blanket of soil, where they can rise to meet the light of day.
Wrap-up
I had a ton of fun growing the Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon and I’m glad that I am able to showcase its growth as a time lapse video for everyone to see and learn from; I certainly learned a lot myself during this grow, and that is to never underestimate a variety just because it has “Bush” or “Dwarf” in its name! Although it was a rough ride for this plant overall, it still made it out okay in the end and I’ll make sure to be more careful/mindful when growing another watermelon in the future; remember to give it plenty of soil and to keep its growth slow & steady, and you’ll be enjoying yourself a nice refreshing watermelon in the end. If you’ve got little space but still want to grow a nice healthy treat, look no further than the Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon; this is the variety for you. Give it a grow!
I have created a separate page where I keep track of the watermelon varieties I have tried on this website and on the YouTube Channel with you all. Check it out!
>> My Favorite Watermelon Varieties <<
Thank you so much for reading on and getting all the way to the end of this post! Like and subscribe to our content & social media for your support and do share it as well! I’d love to see a bunch of people growing their very own watermelon right in the comfort of their own home.
I’ll see you in the next one!
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