A farmer in Panevėžys district is disappointed with her watermelon harvest this year: "I haven't seen such a thing in so many years"

This year's watermelon season in Lithuania is one of the worst in decades. Although the berries produced are of high quality and sweet, the quantities are much lower than usual. Vilma Žukienė from Daniūnai, a farmer who has been growing watermelons for 20 years, confirms this, saying that she has never seen a spring and summer like this in all her experience.

The seedlings did not want to grow

„It was clear from spring that something was wrong. Watermelon and melon seedlings had emerged, but they just didn't want to grow. I haven't seen anything like this in so many years," said V. Žukienė.

This year, she planted about 200 watermelon plants, but the number of flowers was three times less than in previous seasons. This has led to a poor harvest.

According to the grower, watermelons do not like humidity, which is why they always perform better in greenhouses than outdoors. However, this year, due to the amount of work involved in not covering the seedlings, the outdoor carpets were not able to produce at all.

„If the summer is warm and rainy – the harvest is always excellent. But this year, when there was a lot of rain, the seedlings started to suffer from fungal diseases. One of them is – wilt, for which there is no cure. If you find an infected sprout, you have to uproot and destroy it, otherwise the disease spreads instantly," the farmer said.

Quality maintained

Although the harvest is small, the fruit is delicious. According to Žukiene, the greenhouse watermelons are sweet, juicy and of excellent quality.

„The harvest this year is not abundant, but the berries are very tasty. They are good enough for us and for the customers who already come to taste and buy them," she said.

According to the Daniūnai resident, this summer has shown once again that watermelon growing in Lithuania is very much dependent on the weather. Therefore, in the future, plans are underway to invest even more in greenhouses and seedling protection to ensure that the weather does not destroy future crops.