🍉 Mickylee Watermelon

What it looks like

Why this variety

Mickylee — spelled Mickeylee in some extension lists — is a round, globe-shaped watermelon with a light-green rind, sweet red flesh, and fruit of just 8 to 12 pounds. That size is the point: it is an icebox melon, sized for a fridge shelf and a family dinner rather than a farm stand, and its vines are compact by watermelon standards.

Extension lists credit Mickylee with resistance to fusarium wilt, which is the single most useful trait a Florida watermelon can carry, and its earliness — about 80 to 90 days — lets it ripen ahead of the worst late-season pressure. It is also a workhorse pollenizer in seedless watermelon plantings, which is a fancy way of saying bees love its flowers. For a small garden, a trellis is even possible with a strong sling, though most growers let its modest vines run on mulch.

How to grow

Direct sow after the soil hits 70°F or warmer — watermelons germinate in heat or not at all. Plant about 1 inch deep in hills (3 to 4 seeds per hill, thin to the 2 strongest plants), or start indoors 3 to 4 weeks early in peat pots, because watermelons hate root disturbance. Black plastic mulch warms the soil, suppresses weeds, and keeps the fruit clean in Florida’s sandy beds.

Watermelons are space-hungry: plan for vines 10 feet or more, and do not crowd them, because crowded vines stay wet, and wet vines get disease. Row cover until flowering keeps cucumber beetles off young plants — they vector bacterial wilt, which has no cure — then remove it so bees can reach the flowers. Rotate beds: never follow melons, cucumbers, or squash with melons, because fusarium wilt builds up in warm soil and waits for the next crop.

Water & feeding

Deep, regular water during vine growth and fruit set — then TAPER OFF as fruit approaches ripeness. This is the single biggest flavor lever you have: a melon watered heavily right up to harvest tastes watery, while one tapered at the end concentrates its sugars. Mulch holds the even moisture that prevents cracking and blossom-end problems in Florida’s cycle of downpour and drought.

Feed at planting with worm castings worked into the hill, and side-dress at flowering. Too much nitrogen late in the season means lush vines and bland fruit — the plant version of studying for the wrong exam. A little potassium as fruit sizes helps sugars and rind quality.

Common problems

• Cucumber beetles: row cover until flowering; they vector bacterial wilt, which has no cure — prevention beats cure.
• Fusarium wilt: a soil fungus that yellows and collapses vines, worst in warm soil. Rotate beds for years, not months, and prefer resistant varieties where they exist.
• Anthracnose and gummy stem blight: leaf and fruit spots that love warm, wet weather. Airflow, mulch, base watering, and resistant varieties are the defense; remove badly spotted leaves rather than letting them rain spores onto fruit.
• Melonworm and pickleworm: Florida caterpillars that chew leaves and bore into fruit. Hand-pick, watch for frass, and use Bt early on young caterpillars.
• Poor fruit set: usually a lack of pollinators. Hand-pollinate with a paintbrush if bees are scarce — female flowers carry a tiny melon at the base.

Harvest

Ripe when the ground spot is creamy yellow, the nearest tendril dries, and the thump is hollow — small melons can fool you, so check all three signs. Harvest by the trio of signs, not by the calendar alone: a creamy-yellow ground spot where the melon sat, a dried tendril nearest the fruit, and a deep, hollow thump. One sign alone lies; all three together rarely do. Cut the stem, lift — do not drag — and chill the melon before cutting for the crispest flesh.

Saving seeds

Mickylee — spelled Mickeylee in some extension lists — is a round, globe-shaped watermelon with a light-green rind, sweet red flesh, and fruit of just 8 to 12 pounds: an icebox melon, sized for a fridge shelf and a family dinner rather than a farm stand, and a workhorse pollenizer in seedless watermelon plantings, which is a fancy way of saying bees love its flowers. Whether Mickylee is open-pollinated or a hybrid is not pinned down in the sources I checked — extension lists credit it with resistance to fusarium wilt, which is the single most useful trait a Florida watermelon can carry, but none label its breeding class — so treat saved seed as a gamble: if the icebox size and the fusarium resistance matter, buy fresh seed. The full method is in the Saving seeds section of the Watermelon guide.