Melons, like cucumbers, squashes, courgettes and gourds, belong to the cucurbit family. The plants tend to take up a lot of space but they can be treated as ornamentals as well as productive specimens.

I’m about to harvest the first of my melon crop from the conservatory. It is an Edonis F1 hybrid sown in late March with Thompson & Morgan seed. Like the cucumber I grew last year (which provided about 25 cucumbers), the melon plant scrambles across the main beam in my conservatory making an attractive centrepiece.

Melons are easy to grow under glass thanks to our changing climate and improved varieties - a far cry from Victorian times when those masters of industrial horticulture grew melons with the help of round-the-clock labour and some ingenious heating systems.

1. Like a lot of the curcubits, melon seedlings rot off easily. Potting compost needs to be kept barely damp to avoid the problem.

2. Melons need a minimum of 20 degrees Centigrade to germinate. Germination outdoors is possible from mid May but the plants are likely to be knocked back by chilly nights and gloomy days. Generally, melons germinate easily but keeping them going during a "British summer" can sometimes present a problem.

3. These hard-working plants need a rich, fertile compost in order to thrive - plus a weekly dose of tomato feed.

4. Like all the curcubits, melons need a huge amount of water (although they cannot tolerate poorly-drained soil). Once established in pots, it’s sometimes worth mulching to reduce water loss.

5. If growing a melon along the ground, pinch out the growing point after four true leaves so that lateral shoots will form.

6. If, like me, you want to train your plant so that melons hang down from a beam or (sturdy) support, pinch out the growing tip only when it has reached the height you want.

7. Pinch out the lateral shoots at the six-leaf stage.

8. If bees aren’t around, you will need to pollinate about 10 female flowers (with the ovarian bulge below the flower) with male flowers. A single male flower can, in theory, pollinate four females. I tend to pollinate more to make sure enough set.

9. Once about half a dozen melons are set, get rid of further flowers.

10. Red spider mite is a notoriously common pest for most curcubits. In Victorian times the gardeners would damp down melon houses every evening as a preventative measure. If you can’t do that, at least try to maintain high humidity.

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