🍈 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.
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: