Earlier I was quite enthusiastic about the growth of my melons and watermelons. However, cucumber bugs have gotten into them. These bugs carry the “wilt bacteria” in their guts and cause the plants to wilt. As I recall, bacteria love wet conditions. So, melons growing in wet grass with a wilting bacteria present is not a good recipe.

I have had to pull out several yards of wilted melon vine. I did this in an attempt to decrease the amount of bacteria that would be present in the area. However I fear the bacteria has already gotten into the plants’ vascular systems.

I ended up hand-cutting a lot of grass out of the area in an attempt to reduce bacterial thriving conditions. This will probably reduce the amount of water available to the melons. So it comes down to a survival contest between the bacteria and the melons.

Gardening with grass, part two: Bacteria by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International