Update: Trying the 5-gallon flower pot
Today I'm trying my old 5-gallon plastic flower pots as melon cages. I drilled/melted holes around the rim about 3 inches apart and I'm making a round wire lid with a notch for the melon stem.
The honeydew and cantaloupe are already almost ready to pick, so I'm designing this around harvesting rather than trying to build a permanent cage around the vine.
I'll lay the pot on its side, slide the melon inside, put the notched lid over the stem and secure it with thin wire. When the melon is ready, I'll snip the stem, remove the wire and take the melon out.
If I run out of flower pots, I'll go back to hardware cloth.
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So far, I think this is going to be much less fiddly than making the hardware-cloth cages.
Going to find a picture that I took yesterday of the flower pot.
I have the holes drilled/melted - but haven't made the lid yet.
I'll probably turned the pot upside down on hardware-cloth and trace it.
Or maybe cut a wooden round and use it as a jig and trace it.
Depends how ambitious I feel at the moment. Not very.

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