🍈 Winter melon
Grown in summer, kept into winter. One fruit can weigh 10 kg, so give it room to run.
🌱 This one is in the reference and the planting calendar, but you cannot sow it in the game yet.
Winter melon at a glance
Is Winter melon frost tolerant?
No. Cold hurts it even above freezing: damage starts at 4°C and it is killed below 1°C. Sow or plant it out only after your last frost.
What temperature does Winter melon grow best in?
It grows best between 18 and 32°C. Below 12°C it stops growing altogether, and above 36°C it slows down.
How many days does Winter melon take to mature?
About 100–130 days. That is a typical figure: it needs roughly 1600 °C·d of warmth above 12°C, so a warm season gets it there sooner and a cool one later. The city calendars below give the sow and harvest dates for each place.
Is Winter melon a cool-season or warm-season crop?
A warm-season crop. It needs warm days and nights, so it goes in after the last frost, once temperatures are reliably above 18°C.
What the numbers mean
These are the actual parameters this game runs on. Growth is driven by growing degree days: each day contributes max(0, min(mean temp, 35) − 12), and Winter melon is ready when that total reaches 1600. That is why the same seed takes a very different number of days in Dublin and in Guangzhou.
| Base temperature | 12°CBelow this, the plant accumulates no growing degree days at all. |
|---|---|
| Degree days to maturity | 1600 °C·dThe heat budget it must accumulate before it is ready to pick. |
| Comfortable range | 18–32°CWhere it grows without stress. |
| Frost damage below | 4°CLeaves start taking frost damage below this low. |
| Killed below | 1°CBelow this it does not come back. |
| Heat stress above | 36°CAbove this the plant slows down and stops setting fruit well. |
| Typical time to harvest | 100–130 days |
| Yield per bed | 2 fruits |
Things worth knowing
- It is called winter melon not because it is grown then, but because the waxy bloom lets it keep until winter.
- That wax layer cuts water loss enough that a mature fruit stores for six months at room temperature.
Where and when to sow Winter melon
Pick your city to see the months when Winter melon scores well against that city's real climate records: