Once you've seen a ripe charentais, the color change will be obvious. It goes (almost instantly) from a gray-green to a light yellow color that might be called beige by some. What you call goldish is probably ripe and should be picked right away. Also, you can smell the deliciousness when they're ripe. Got a photo to post?

p.s., the direction's on the pack of seed's said that the mellon would be ready to pick when the leaf that is closest to the mellon would die they would be ready to pick then,but in my case the mellon's where rock hard so i waited till the mellons was just firm (not hard)and could just bareley smell them and i still had to cut the stem to free the mellons,hopeing this help's you. les matzek

Melon grower. So jealous you had a charentais today. I just picked a ripe arava today and it was good but after the charentais I had the arava did not compare. I really can't wait to have a ripe charentais. Where did you get your mesh bags. May need to invest in some. I think I may have some ripe honey orange in a week or so.

ltilton: Here, Lilly ripens at about the same time as Early Sugarshaw, and it was a little earlier than the Burpee Early Hybrid Crenshaw this year. Other years, Burpee and Sugarshaw have ripened at about the same time. I've seen the Burpee hybrid ripen fairly consistently in cool fall weather in a Zone 5/6 garden with no special efforts to speed growth. Lilly leans toward a Casaba style melon. It may not take too well to cool ripening weather. But don't take my word for it, because we haven't had cool ripening weather. I don't really know if it ripens more slowly than the Burpee hybrid in cool weather. None of the Crenshaws is remarkably productive for me, but I have repeat crops on Lilly and Sugarshaw this year. On the other hand, the melons are bigger than the typical muskmelon, so fewer melons per plant seems sort of acceptable, given their quality. Wayne, one advantage of a St. Nick type melon is that if the plant dies early or if it just doesn't ripen before the end of the season, you can peel and seed it and pretend it's a sweet cucumber. You can try the same thing with honeydews. Our old dog pulled up a Piel de Sapo plant one year. He loved burpless cucumbers and I think he mistook the melons for cucumbers. I have seed of the earlier new variety Lambkin, but didn't plant any this year. I don't grow netted muskmelons here anymore since they are grown commercially nearby. We get ripe ones at the grocery store and there have been some remarkably good ones in the past few years for not much money. I think there has been some improvement in standard commercial varieties. I only grow specialty types now.