I have grown Goddess, Sarah's choice and Ambrosia. Goddess is an Athena type. Good production excellent flavor, large melon. Sarah's Choice is a medium size melon with good flavor and production. Ambrosia did nothing me for in any category. Mediocre
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I grew Sarah's and Mavericks last summer. had lots of melons, but all were terrible tasting - absolutely no sweetness. Anyone have any ideas? Not enough fertilizer, etc?

Any particular reliable seed sources for the Goddess" melon? Thanks
Bob, was it overly rainy or cool last season? Some say melons are sweeter when ripening under dry warm/hot conditions.

WOW!

Ambrosia has always been a staple for us with, for us, an excellent, unique taste and just the smell of them ripening ... mmmm! Production has been great too.

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But with the above statements from farmerdill and digdirt ( which combined, seems like the gospel to me), I just ordered Goddess and look forward to these.

vgkg, I just ordered from Harris and they have never let me down in any manner - an exceptional company.

Cucumis melo can vary widely in flavor depending on conditions. Ther are some soils and condition where almost all vearieties are excellent. Other areas where you have search among varieties to find one that is edible. The Georgia sandhills is one of the latter. I try a lot of varieties to find one I like. I get Goddess from Twilley (http://www.twilleyseed.com/) but it is widely distributed. Like Athena(which is also good) it was developed for the southeast, so I don't know how it will perform in the north.

I grow both Ambrosia and Sierra Gold. Both produce well for me in our hot humid conditions. Down here in Carolina you need them to ripen as early as possible because they lose flavor if the night temps get too high.

Just thought I'd update how my first time growing Goddess melons are doing. I planted 3 varieties - Ambrosia, Sugar Queen, and Goddess. Without a doubt the Goddess has double the production of the other two, possibly triple. All 3 varieties are still unripe but the goddess was so productive that I had to cull a couple of vines as they were setting fruits too close side-by-side. The pale green Goddess rhine lacks netting and almost resembles the charcantis types (the middle east melons, sorry poor spelling). I assume goddess turns orange on the outside when ripe?

A light orange, but the scent is a better marker of ripeness, in my experience. It's similar to a Charentais scent, but less strong and without the faint citrusy aroma of Charentais.

Digging up this old thread after doing a multi-year experiment.

I've had great results with Ambrosia cantaloupe over the years until I began trying other cultivars. So my experiment was to plant only Ambrosia vs. planting Ambrosia and another cultivar. The results thus far are - in (3?) years where only Ambrosia was planted all melons were sweet, vs. in (3?) years where another variety was planted along side Ambrosia, some Ambrosia melons were sweet and some were not. So, was this coincidence or were the non-sweet Ambrosia melons cross pollinated? Or, could it be that the seeds planted in the inconsistent years not true Ambrosia Hybrid quality?

Second, our local garden center expert prefers Aphrodite over Ambrosia...says it's a sweeter melon.

I never did get back here to update my Goddess melon tryout in 2012. Though they got off to a good start many of the Goddess melons were lost due to ends splitting open and the ones that did ripen properly had too firm/crisp of a texture for my tastes as compared to the melt-in-your-mouth Ambrosia melons. The last couple of years I've returned to planting only Ambrosia cantaloupes and am content with sticking to them.

For my money no better cantaloupe has been developed than Harper Hybrid. But the plant patent owners have quit developing the seed, so it is no longer available. Had I known this I would have purchased a pound of seed enough to last a long time with proper care. Why the patent owners have done this is a mystery to me and everyone who grew Harper Hybrid, a very bad decision by the people who think they know best. Harper has been my favorite for over 40 years, I have grown them all and continue to try to find a replacement, with no luck yet I grow about ten varieties evey year and just give them away because none have done the trick for me. Harper Hybrid will always be top dog when it comes to cantaloupes or muskmelons, bar none.

I have raised Ambrosia, Goddess, and likely Sarah's Choice. I don't remember how I did with Sarah's Choice. Ambrosia did well in '84 but we hated the musky smell and flavor. I raised Goddess again last year. It is early. Well, the melons have been either exquisite in flavor or bland. Last year they were bland. There must be a varience in the seedbank or sumthin.

Lest anyone think that soil and weather made the difference...right beside the bland Goddess, I harvested a large Burpee Early Hybrid Crenshaw that was A++ in flavor.