wait till the ground is warm. Sometime in May, or early June is when I planted them before.

They need a lot of roaming room, and then a lot of water then the fruit is trying to grow.

Good luck.

Moni

Cantaloupe as we know it here in the U.S.A. is actually muskmelon. (Just so you know, true cantaloupes have rather rough, warty exteriors that are not netted and are sort of oblong in shape. Muskmelon have netted skins, a distinctly musky odor and flesh which ranges from salmon-orange to green.) Don't worry too much over what they are called. I know they are actually muskmelons, but usually refer to them as cantaloupe. If you say muskmelon no one will know what you are talking about! LOL

You do need to wait for the soil to warm up. Muskmelons and cantaloupes need a soil temp of at least 60 degrees. If you plant them too early they will just sit there and sulk in the cold soil. Some people cover their melon beds with black plastic. It helps the soil warm up more quickly. I don't do that though. They do best on loose silty loam or sandy loam soils, but can be grown on many (almost any) types of soil.

Muskmelons need lots of water during the early growth period, but once they start to form "netting" on the skin, water them as little as you can get by with. Too much water too close to harvest waters down the flavor.

They need lots of room. I like to plant mine near the fence around my garden and they sometimes creep out beyond the fence as well as climbing up onto the fence so they can have even more room.

They are bee-pollinated. If you have plants and flowers, but no fruit, then you don't have bees around. If that happens, you can pollinate it yourself. If you need to do that, come back to the forum when the time comes and ask how.

If growing it from seed or transplants found locally, then you are at the mercy of what you can find. I order seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed and Seed Savers Exchange, so I can grow many different cantaloupes and muskmelons, and other melons too. When I was newer to gardening, I just planted whatever I found on the seed racks, though, and they did just fine.

My favorites are: Collective Farm Woman, Charentais, Schoon's Hard Shell, and Kansas. I grow about 20 different varieties.

Pests/problems you may encounter include foliage diseases like powdery mildew and downy mildew. Watering with a soaker hose or drip irrigation helps keep foliage diseases to a minimum, as wet foliage increases the chance of disease. Mulching the soil around them helps some, but doesn't eliminate disease.

If soil nematodes are a problem for you, you may have a problem growing cantaloupes/muskmelons as they are subject to infection by the nematodes.

Common insect pests include cucumber beetles, squash bugs and aphids.

Harvest your melons when the fruit slips easily from the vine when you give it a VERY gentle tug. If a gentle tug won't remove it, then the abscission layer (where the fruit stem is attached to the vine) isn't fully mature. When the abscission layer is fully mature, the melon will "slip" from the vine quite easily. If you find a mature melon has fallen off the vine, then it is "full slip" or mature.

Melons are EASIER to grow, I think, than they sound. Plant them, feed them, water them as appropriate, treat for disease as necessary, harvest them and eat them! :)

Dawn

I love growing melons and watermelons too. I think I have 7 or 8 different varities of melons to try this year and 3 or 4 watermelons. I wish I were at home so I could list them. One of my favorites is a softball sized, crunchy fleshed melon called seranade.

~Heidi

Heidi:

Wanna see my melon list for this year? I'll post it here for y'all, but you'll have to post your list too later!
Here it is:

The following are cantaloupes, muskmelons or honeydew melons I'm growing this year:

Gallery F1 Galia
Earlidew honeydew
Solid Gold muskmelon
Schoon's Hardshell
Charentais
Kansas
Queen Anne's Pocket Melon (virtually inedible, but perfumes the whole garden or house with a luscious melon smell)
Green Machine
Piel De Sapo (Frog Skin)
Emerald Gem
Collective Farm Woman

The following are this year's watermelons:

Moon and Stars (red flesh)
Tendersweet Orange (orange flesh)
Golden Midget (pinkish-red flesh)
Pony Yellow (yellow flesh)
Yellow Doll (yellow flesh)
Black Tail Mountain (red flesh)
Tiger Baby (pink flesh)
New Orchid (orange flesh)

These get their own garden spot this year, as they've outgrown the real garden!!! To go with them, I'll be planting the following members of the closely-related squash family:

SQUASH:
Jaradale
Galeux D'Eysines
Golden Delicious
Turk's Cap
Black Futsu
Orange-Striped Cushaw
Green-Striped Cushaw
Red Kuri (aka Hokkaido)
Table Gold Acorn
Chicago Warted Hubbard
Red Warty Thing
Lakota
Spaghetti Squash
Sweet Mama Kobocha
Early Butternut
Tuffy Acorn
Cornell's Bush Delicata

PUMPKINS (STILL, TECHNICALLY SQUASH, AREN'T THEY?):
Triple Treat
Prizewinner
Jack Be Little
Baby Boo (white)
Lumina (white)
Paint-A-Punkin from Pinetree
Neck Pumpkin
Magic Lantern

And, finally, growing on the fence alongside this new bed will be the following gourds:

Orange
Birdhouse
Snake
Swan
Crown of Thorns
Spoon
Pear Bicolor
Flat Striped
White Apple
Dipper
Bottle
Powderhorn
Italian Edible
Luffa Sponge

And to think, that I started out growing only one kind of cantaloupe (muskmelon)--I think it was Rocky Ford or something, and one watermelon (maybe Charleston or Sweet Crimson)! Look how an obsession evolves!

Dawn

WOW! OK, that does it! I am gonna have to win the lottery so I can buy the lot behind us, quit work, and play in the dirt some more!
~Heidi (running out to buy a lottery ticket. Oh wait..we don't have a lottery here yet. phooeey)

Dawn, here is my list of watermelons and melons I am growing this year.

Watermelon-

Jubilee
Yellow Petite
Sorbet Swirl

Melons-

Serenade
Honey Pearl
Sweetie#6
Galia Passport
Charentais
Ali Baba
Ginger Pride
Schoon's Hardshell
Sakata's Sweet
Earliqueen
Minnesota Midget

Last year was not very productive with the melons as I had a lot of PM and pest problems. Hoping this year will be as good as 2003 which was my first experiment phase with the non box store types of melons. That fueled my addicition to the not so usual. If you want to try some of my seeds, let me know as I will have a few left from each package even after sharing with a friend in my neighborhood.

~Heidi

Heidi,

Sorbet Swirl! What a name. I bet it will be a gorgeous melon.

My neighbor who plants corn too early also harvests his watermelon too early 'cause he can't wait. One thing he does to check of ripeness is to cut a "plug" out of the rind....sort of the way you'd cut a soil sample out of the ground.

If the flesh on the plug he removes is ripe, he picks the melon. If not, he slides the plug back in and waits for it to grow some more. I don't know why the melon does not spoil? Maybe it does and he just won't tell me. He plants acres of melons, and always gives me some (but none have had plugs cut into them.) I just thump the melons and watch for drying tendrils myself. Never have tried his plug method. LOL (He is an outstanding, if somewhat impatient, gardener!

If you have any seed for Ali Baba left, I'll trade you for it. You can have whatever you want from my "extensive collection".

Now, if only the soil would warm up a little more for those melons!

Dawn

Yes, sandy soil is very good for muskmelons. Dawn, I never knew you were that much of a cucurbit guru. I need a section to grow all the cucurbits I really want! LOL!
You gave very interesting info, but did not include that muskmelons are actually most closely related to the cucumbers and not the watermelons. Just look at the seeds. Cucumis sativa is the botanical name for all the cukes, while C. melo is all the musk, casaba, honeydew and Israel type melons.
The Armenian melon is sold as a "burpless" cuke. It is actually a non-sweet muskmelon.
I think your "orange warty thing" may be a red hubbard. I sure hope you are a good hand-pollinator. I want seeds from your neck pumpkins and O.S. cushaw. I'll try to get some yellow and solid orange cushaw seeds next year. I want a collection of cushaws.

I almost did go into the whole discussion of the cucurbits, but didn't want to get too detailed on a post where the original question was simply about growing cantaloupes!!! I could have rambled on forever, though, about both the melons and the squashes as Amy Goldman has gotten me addicted to them via her two incredible books, THE COMPLEAT SQUASH, and MELONS FOR THE PASSIONATE GROWER.

You're correct. My "Red Warty Thing" is a Curcubita maxima, Hubbard group. I can't wait to see how it does this year!

I have always grown lots of decorative gourds for fall decorations, and birdhouse gourds for birdhouses, and every year I grow more and more true cantaloupes and heirloom melons. The "new thing" in my garden is the new, long bed of every kind of heirloom squash I can find (or at least, every kind I could afford to buy the seed of).

In addition to wanting to eat them, I envision an old antique farm wagon sitting next to my red barn in the fall, loaded to the max with squashes and gourds in every size and color. Of course, I don't even have an old antique farm wagon....yet! If I'm going to dream, might as well dream big!!! I'll probably end up with a little red Radio Flyer wagon or wheelbarrow full of squashes/gourds, but you never know! I'm wondering what my DH would say if I told him I wanted an old antique farm wagon for a combination Mother's Day/Birthday gift. It doesn't even have to be old OR antique as long as it looks the part!!! He's pretty handy with the tools, so maybe he could build me a replica?

When I come to OKC, which will probably be next weekend for the plant sale, I'll bring you seeds of all kinds!

Dawn, I hope you are hand-pollinating. I think it's especially easy for cucurbits and I have a big bunch of cotton swabs [get bulk bags of 1,000 for $1 at Dollar Tree] and some masking tape. I remove some unopened male flowers and go to the target plant, open the female flowers and smear them with pollen and tape shut. Then I take long twist ties and wrap loosely on the stem which tags it as a seed fruit, not to be picked till fully ripe. If visitors come around, I've even gone so far as to attach labels stating "seed squash--do not pick" on them.
I'd be very interested in seeing those books you have. I used to get seeds from Glenn Drowns and had told him to create the encyclopedia of Cucurbitaceae. Actually, 20 years later, he can accomplish that with far less effort--photographing what he grows and downloading pics as well as text onto a CD-ROM, rather than a huge book!
Now I can see why you hate those nasty squash bugs so much! I have really discovered someone who loves this family as much as I do! I never get tired of gourds and the huge diversity of squashes. I just need 640 acres to grow all of the species, wild and cultivar. Do you have the seeds for the white or Lebanese-type zucchini [cousa]? I have the black, gray, green, striped cocuzzi and golden. I also need seed for an OP round zucchini.

Well, I haven't hand-pollinated before, because I haven't grown this many kind before nor was I saving my own seed before.

This year I'm going to hand pollinate and bag the flowers. I'll mark the "seed squash" and "seed melons" with ribbon. I don't think any humans will bother them, as no one really picks my stuff except me. (OK, mostly me and sometimes the deer, but they don't bother my cucurbits.) Well, I do have a six-year-old helper who comes over to visit every now and then, and he likes to choose and pick his own melons to take home, but he always does it in my presence. He also loves to gather eggs from the henhouse and take them home to his granny's. He's a city boy, but loves the visits to "the farm".

Glenn Drowns -- isn't he the breeder of the Black Tail Mountain watermelon? My favorite and the most delicious melon on earth, at least in our soil and with our climate. They've done really well here the last two years. Everyone who eats them always says "the best watermelon I've ever had"!

I don't think I have seed for the white or Lebanese-style zucchini nor do I have seed for an OP round zucchini. I don't grow a lot of zukes....cause one plant usually makes more than we need!

BTW, saw an article in the newspaper and it said Death Valley is awash in wildflowers because it has had an "abundance" of rain (over six inches since last July). They mentioned in the article that the wildflowers were being visited by Sphinx moths!

Dawn

Dawn, you have mail. :-)

Dawn, over on the butterfly garden page, i have been talking much about those WLS's. They bloomed in the desert along with the 10's of millions of painted lady b'flies! In fact, the big WLS larvae began to migrate--looking for a place to pupate and swarms of them, like army worms, even caused some traffic hazards. poor little hornworms! I never had anyone scoop up a bucket of these already-full-grown cats and send to me, but I did get some ova. Mine hatched late, and they refused to eat all but the dock, so many starved. I think they were just weak/inferior to begin with, much like poultry chicks which take too long to hatch. A few more died from being accidently bruised during transfer to fresh food because they would not just move on their own.
I ordered more ova which should be better, coming from Calif's second brood of WLS. I think I'll just use these for specimen moths and not breed or release. It took my cats about 2 weeks to get up to 3/4" and half are still a little smaller. Meanwhile, the guy who sold me the ova has cats about 2" now. I think my ova got too cold during shipment.
Still, in a month, I should have upward of 500 baby WLS cats from more ova, and it's good the weather is much warmer, too.

Ya'll make this seem pretty serious.

I read somewhere (biggest problem w/the internet--if you don't bookmark it, you can't come back to it--I even lost this forum for a while...)that watermelons grow nicely by just dumping a bag of topsoil and a bag of composted manure together, mixing them and planting. Wonder if it will work for muskmelon? I take it I should wait awhile prior to planting either? That's good, cause I just ordered the seed this evening.

My little orphan strawberry plants from last year are setting on fruit already. Wonder what I could grow if I knew what I was doing?

Heidibird and Okiedawn,

How close together do you plant your seeds? I'm imagining vines crawling all over each other crowding out my garden! But I would love to grow more than the usual yellow crookneck, plain zucchini, and cantelope.

Do you trellis them? If so, how much seed to length of fence line?

Here's what I'm growing this year in the melon department:

WATERMELONS

*Garden Baby
*Moneymaker
*Moon & Stars
*Sugar Baby
*Tendersweet Orange

MELONS, OTHER

*Honeydew
*Korean

CANTELOPE

*Farmers Market (unknown variety from trade)
*HaleÂs Best
*Minnesota Midget

This will be my first time growing melons so I'll either have great beginner's luck or they'll all die before they even get started. LOL

Any comments on these varieties? Most of them are odds and ends that came my way in trades so I figured I'd just plant them all and see what comes of it.

Robolink, I do trellis most of mine. DH puts up 2 sections of cattle panels for me and I plant 2 or 3 hills on either side of those. Plus I also plants melons along the edge of the garden so they can crawl into the yard and not take up as much precious garden space. Besides-the other melons not on the edge are using that!
~Heidi
Good luck with your melons

Suggestion:
this year, in case we do have a drought, run some soaker hose in circles around your melon hills. If it gets really dry, you can still get the water to the roots without rotting out your vines. Worked well in drought years in NW OK, home of moon and stars watermelons, my favorite. Yum!

Robolink:

When it comes to growing melons, I break all the spacing rules and plant them too close together! Go ahead and laugh, but I get lots of melons. :)

How far apart they are spaced depends on the variety. Some vine much more than others. Some, like Sugar Baby, have fairly compact vines. The seed packet will tell you the recommended spacing, but feel free to deviate and plant them more closely together!

I trellis mine whenever I can, especially the smaller melons. I let mine run, roam and creep wherever they want to go...out of their own beds, down the pathways, into other beds (I figure they are serving as 'living mulch'), through the fence, and into the yard. I'm in a rural area, though, with a lot of space.

Dawn

Am growing
Ambrosia ((Super Sweet))and Minnesota Midget, it is by far my favorite because of taste as well as size. I am trying a new one this year called Orange Blossom. Anyone know anything about it?

Diane,

Of the melon varieties that you have, I have grown:

Sugar Baby which produces well and stays disease free

Moon and Stars, which was my dad's all-time favorite from his childhood, and did OK for me. I don't think I understood the first year that I grew it that the leaves would be mottled just like the rind, so I kept trying to treat it for an illness it did not have. Now, I know that comment has you rolling on the ground laughing at me. It is funny now, but at the time I was really frustrated with it!

And, I'll throw in another free tip about another bizarre melon. If you ever grow "Golden Midget" watermelon, the rind of the melon AND the plant foliage BOTH turn golden-yellow when the melon is ripe. Once again, I didn't realize this would happen, and worried and fretted over that plant.

Tendersweet Orange: Yummy, yummy, yummy.

Hale's Best: One of the first melons I ever grew. Did fine. I don't recall that it had any particular disease problem.

Minnesota Midget: This one is super-early. If you get it in the ground by May 1st, you'll have ripe melons before July 4th. Very hardy & resistant to disease. Compact plant so it tolerates close spacing. Fruit is small enough that it can be grown on a fence or trellis. Tastes good.

Pokesalad, Is Orange Blossom the orange-fleshed honeydew that came out a few years ago? If it is, I haven't grown it, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that its flavor and disease-hardiness were excellent and its productivity was good to very good.

Dawn

I am going to try some this year. I've seen info here about covering ground w/plastic, and I'm a bit confused. Don't muskmelons vines have suckers that take nourishment from the dirt? How can they do that if the dirt is covered w/plastic? And doesn't rain water collect on the plastic and cause problems?

Please let me know if I am misunderstanding something here.

Thanks1

Plaid thumb,

Some people do cover the ground with plastic. I believe they do it either to warm up the ground faster, if they are using black plastic; to keep weeds down; and to reduce contact between the melons and the ground (melons can rot on wet ground).

I personally don't use plastic in my garden and I have no problem getting a good crop. Because our growing season in Oklahoma is so long anyway, I don't think it is necessary to warm up the ground, unless you are just an impatient gardener. I much around my plants with hay or straw. Either one of them keeps the ground cool/moist during our hot summers and keeps weeds from sprouting, for the most part. When weeds do sprout through the mulch they are easy to uproot because the ground is cool/moist instead of being baked rock-hard.

One reason I don't like plastic under melons is that melons love water and the plastic interferes with water absorption.
Another is that our soil gets plenty hot in the summer, and I don't need sun shining down on black plastic to make the soil any hotter than it already is. A compromise, though, could be to use black plastic to warm your soil early in the season, and then cover the black plastic with an organic mulch (bark, hay, straw, grass clippings, etc.) later in the season to keep the ground cooler.

As far as the rooting of melons into the soil at locations other than their primary roots: this is a phenomenon that I have seen more with squash than with melons. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen with muskmelons/cantaloupes--just that I haven't noticed it and it is not necessary. (A prime advantage of encouraging squash vines to root into the ground all along the vine is that it is added insurance that at least part of the vine will survive if squash borers get into the vine (and they will!), but that's not a problem with melons.)

Both muskmelons and cantaloupes have huge, massive root systems that take up about as much space underground as the vines do above ground. Melon roots can extend down as far as four feet, although most of the feeder roots are in the 18" to 24" zone. I've grown muskmelons on wire trellising with only the initial roots in the soil and everything else "up in the air" and they have grown and produced copious amounts of fruit.

Just remember...for melon success, avoid over-watering and over-fertilization. Too much food/water will give you lots of vine and little fruit and, possibly, lots of fruit with no flavor.

Happy Melon Growing & Eating!

Dawn

I haven't grown cantelope (or muskmelon) before but am going to try this year. I just love to eat them, and for some reason the local stores here in Wisconsin get them in from California, and they are rarely ripe. When they come in season here local farmers sell them, but they are strangely expensive. So...I'm going to try it myself!

I have soil that is quite clay-y. I have a large yard, a big portion of which is "wild" (not mowed). I was going to plant one or two cantelope plants near my tomotoes. I did that last year with pumpkins, and they didn't seem to bother each other, though I got VERY few pumpkins. I water teh tomatoes a lot, and wonder if maybe that will be too much for the cantelopes? I could plant them in another area. Someone told me each cantelope plant needs 10 square feet!

Last year I tried growing some from seeds and had little luck (I think I just tried to plant too much stuff in too small an area). This year I though I'd just buy some small plants at the nursery.

Do they need a support? Would a tomato cage work? How 'bout having them grow up an old step ladder? Or can I just leave them on the ground?

Any adivse would be appreciated. This is such a nice friendly forum!

Hi Ciaobello,

First, if your clay-y soil will grow tomatoes, it will grow melons. I don't know what kind of soil pH you have there, so just want to add that cantaloupes/muskmelons don't grow well on soil with a pH of 6.0 or less. (They'll grow on soil that is that acid, but will do poorly and appear somewhat stunted.) Just an FYI in case you have acid soil.

You say you water the tomatoes a lot. Well, if you plant the melons in the same place and they get a lot of water all season long, you could have several problems resulting from excess moisture: (1) fruits resting on the ground may rot; (2) fruits may crack and split over as they near maturity, and (3) fruits may lack good flavor, as the flavor is literally watered down by having too much water applied as the fruits mature. You might try planting the melons as far away from the tomatoes as you can, given the constraints of your garden.

You CAN grow melons on a ladder, trellis, fence, cage, etc. I have grown them on fences and on cages. They do quite well. If you are worried the fruit will get too large and will break the vine or break off the vine prematurely, you can make a "sling" to hold the fruit. You can use something like cheesecloth or old pantyhose legs. Just side the sling over the immature fruit and tie the sling to the fence, cage, trellis, etc. Lots of people who are space-challenged grow melons this way.

You can just let them sprawl on the ground if you have room.
If your ground stays wet, though, you need some mulch between the fruit and the soil, or some other way to keep the fruit from touching the ground and rotting. If your ground stays moderately dry, though, then rot probably won't be a problem.

You mentioned that your pumpkin vines didn't produce much fruit. This could have occurred for several reasons, and the same thing could happen with your melons. To avoid having the same problem this year, keep these things in mind:

(a) melons (and pumpkins) are bee-pollinated, so if you don't have bees when the plants are flowering, you won't get fruit (you can overcome this by hand-pollinating if you have too), and avoid using chemicals that can kill the bees;

(b) excess moisture and excess fertilizer can give you "all vine and no fruit", so give the plants what they need, but no more than they need. If you have so much foliage that you and the bees can't see the flowers, then your plants are probably getting too much water/food

Good luck,

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn. I will prepare the soil in part of my "wild" area. I don't normally water there, so I will be able to control the water the melons get, separate from the tomatoes. Then they will have a lot of room to spread out and I won't have to do a trellis or cage. I really appreciate the advice!

Dawn--don't know if you check this thread any more or not. Hope so...
How much is "too much" water? We've had no rain to speak of down here, and I'm soaking my sweet corn every three or four days, and doing the melons and strawberries at the same time. I planted the melons on newspapers covered with a couple mounds of top soil/composted manure mixtures. It seems to dry out in just a day or so with our hot sun and wind. I can pull some of last year's wood chips out of the pile and mulch the mounds, I guess.

I noticed yesterday that I have a couple of watermelons setting on now, but muskmelon is still just short vines and gobs of flowers.

Hi Otis!

I always try to check any threads that are active 'cause you never know what will pop up!

It is really hard to define how much water is 'enough' without it being 'too much', but I'll try. You want your plants to get enough water that they grow and produce melons. Beyond that, you want to give them as little water as possible.

I water the vines more early on in the growth cycle when they are actively growing and flowering. Once the flowers set fruit I try to water little, if any. Of course, in a drought year like this one, I will probably have to water some just to keep the things alive.

How can you tell if your melons aren't getting enough water? Once fruit has set, it should develop in the proper watermelon shape....which, of course, is long and oval for many melons, but short and round for some of the smaller melons like Sugar Baby and Black Tail Mountain. If the melons are misshapen, maybe curving like a gourd, for example, they need more water.

By the way, once you see a fruit form on the vine, you can expect to have a ripe melon in approximately 45 days. So, if you noticed when the fruit formed, you can water during the first 25 days or so, and cut back the watering to almost nothing during the last 15 or 20 days. Sometimes that works. How to know if you watered too much? The flavor of the watermelon will be "watered down". I think learning how much water is enough is really a process of trial and error. Muskmelons, by the way, don't like excess water any more than watermelons do! It is actually easier to get good melon crops in dry years, because then you are in control of the moisture they get! I hope your melons are doing well and taste yummy when you get to harvest and eat them!

Dawn

What do you do about the fruit that sets at different times on the same vine? As the vine grows, blossoms get pollenated at different times so there are melons at different stages of growth. How do I water the young ones at the end of the vine without watering down the taste in the oldest melons close to the base of the plant? Are honey dew the same as muskmelon where watering is concerned?

Hi Terry!

That's a hard question. I just try to water as little as possible once fruit sets. Sometimes, in a very dry year, that will mean that the largest melons are the ones which formed fruit first and got more water in their early growth stages, whereas the later fruit is significantly smaller as I am not watering much at that point. The smaller, later ones often taste better than the earlier ones too!

Sometimes, if I have a couple of large melons and pick them, I will then immediately give the plant a long, deep watering only once from a soaker hose in order to nurture the smaller melons. This works best if you have a large melon or two or three that set at about the same time followed by another bunch that set some time later.

All melons are pretty much the same when it comes to watering. Because they, like tomatoes, are largely comprised of water, too much water will literally 'water down' the flavor.

If, in fact, you were to have a huge thunderstorm dump 2" or 3" or 4" of rain on your garden at one time (and wouldn't that be lovely right now), not only would you see some of the tomatoes cracking (because the inside literally grows faster than the ouside skin) but your melons might crack as well.

It is a tough dilemma....how to water enough, but not too much. Generally, if the plants look healthy and are not just flat out shriveling up and drying out, I won't water them. Also, lots of water produces lots more foliage which then requires more water which produces more foliage, etc. Remember that the goal is yummy-tasting fruit, NOT lush foliage and big, fat, watery tasteless fruit.

All this talk about melons is making me wish I had a ripe one right now!

Dawn

my cantelope look great (knock on wood)- getting pretty big but no signs of the vine drying - how do I know when it's time to harvest?

Yesterday I went out and found a honeydew that had released itself from the vine so we took it in and cut it open and it was ripe. We consumed the entire thing. Well, it was only the size of a softball. The other one that was right beside it was twice that size so we cut it thinking it would be ripe too. We were wrong. When they are ready, they release from the vine themselves or they pull away very easily. My muskmelons are still green.

finally have a couple of muskemelon forming on our vines. Puny little vines, really surprised me. I realize it is a bush variety, but I didn't realize the vines would be really really short...

Can you start a muskmellon from seed this late and hope to get any fruit by frost about october 20th? Put some in today from a delicious mellon we had last year and I saved the seed. Have never planted mellon before and this was just an afterthought. Do not even know if the mellon was a hybrid or op but should be interesting to see what comes up--if anything!

Hi All,
I am planning to grow the cantaloupe variety Hale's sweet Jumbo(Am i right with the name)in my backyard this year. Will somebody be able to tell me how long the vines grow and approximately how many fruits I can expect(I am planning to grow just one plant to try). And how hard it is to clean the vines after the harvest is over(we might move after this year..)

Thanks,

Vidyaa

something that i have done in the past with cantaloupes(muskmellon) is take a styrofoam plate, turn it bottom up and set the mellon on it. this keeps them from setting on the wet ground. Plus it makes them easier to find the second time.

The styrofoam is so it wont rot or hold water like the paper ones would.You just have to gather the plates when you pick the mellons.

Vidyaa,

How long the vines get will depend on how fertile your soil is, how much water the vines receive, and whether or not you fertilize regularly. In general, Hale's Best Jumbo (I don't know of one called Hale's Sweet Jumbo, so am assuming you have Hale's Best Jumbo) will put out vines about 4' to 6' long and each vine will produce about 5 to 7 melons per plant in optimal conditions. The vines are easy to pull up and compost, or throw into the trash, when they're done.

If you were planting a row of plants, you'd space them about 3' apart.

Dawn