How can I care for a growing fruit?

[CrazyConure]

I'm talking about fruits like pumpkins and melons that grow on the ground. They are being grown in containers, and I'm letting them run on the brick floor which gets sunlight and can heat up. A couple of questions:

Should I put some sort of mat on the area the fruit is?

Should I keep a cloth on the fruit to shade it from sunlight?

Do I turn it every couple of days/weeks to keep it even?

Proper floor fruit growing tips are more than welcome.

 

[CrazyConure]

Anyone?

 

[Chuck]

Anyone?

No
maybe
No
How does ground fruit grow in nature? That is what you are trying to achieve. All a brick is is hard ground. You might put a piece of cardboard underneath it but it is not necessary. In nature the leaves of the plant shades the fruit but your plant is a little spindly at the moment. If you plant doesn't start producing more leaves you might have to cover the fruits with a little shade. Does mother nature turn her fruits? Of course not

 

[remnant]

I faced a similar predicament when I was growing butternuts. They were in contact with the soil which meant that they could rot. To make matters worse, wasps were injecting their eggs into them resulting in rotting. I discovered that wrapping the fruit with a transparent paperbag with holes on the sides for aeration and drainage solved these problems.

 

[Corzhens]

We had cantaloupe this summer and the fruits were okay except for some which suffered some rotten parts maybe due to the insect in the soil. What we did with the clean cantaloupe was to place dried grass underneath. But the neighbor who used to be a farmer said that the dry grass may magnify the heat of sunlight and may cause a burn to the fruits. So we removed and just let nature take its course. And so we harvested some good ones and some bad ones as well.

 

[ashley0323]

I wouldnt think it would need shaded or anything like that. In regular outdoor conditions, melons do not get turned or shaded as needed. I would say just water it, keep it in sunlight and leave it alone.

 

[SirJoe]

The important thing is not to touch the fruit when it's growing besides that you don't really have to much besides watering the plants the same way you usually do. Don't move the plant either, let it run by itself.

 

[Brandie]

I put pie tins under mine so the soil doesn't touch the fruit, but I don't know about brick.