I generally wait and plant seed after the soil temperatures are at least 70 degrees or warmer consistently. If you sow seed once the soil is that warm, it will germinate in a week or two. If you wait until the soil temp hits the 90s, the seeds will germinate in 3-4 days.

With melons, you don't want too much water or it will water down the flavor, and you don't want too much soil fertility or it will have an adverse affect on the flavor, and possibly on the color and texture. White heart is a hard, whitish streak of melon flesh that is associated with excess moisture or excess nitrogen at a certain point---I think it occurs if either one is too high as the melon is ripening. You cannot control your rainfall, but you still might get good-flavored melons if you time your planting so they are maturing during your hottest and driest month.

I have grown melons both in amended clay and in unamended sand, and they grew well in both and had good flavor in both. I am really careful about only giving them the absolute minimal amount of irrigation I can, and I don't fertilize them at all---though their soil gets compost added to it most years a couple of months before I plant them.

I like Sugar Baby and my fave smallish melon is one bred by Glenn Drowns called Blacktail Mountain, though I haven't grown it the last couple of years. I've been growing several mini-watermelons from Renee's Garden Seeds, and last year I grew the larger Harvest Moon, which was an AAS selection that I think has Moon and Stars in its breeding line. Yellow Doll and Yellow Baby both produced tons of yellow-fleshed melons for us last year that were so yummy (we had the perfect summer weather--hot and dry).

In a really wet year, it is hard to get melons with good flavor.

I have grown Black Diamond and Black Diamond Yellow Belly, which was one of my dad's faves, along with Moon and Stars, but they take forever to enlarge and ripen and I get tired of waiting for them. I like the mini melons, also called refrigerator sized melons since they easily fit into a fridge, because they tend to give you ripe melons roughly in roughly 65-75 days instead of 80-100.

Dawn, thanks. I will try to grow them in the bed I started last year for the Seminole pumpkin, it is the highest and driest spot on my lawn. I had planned on growing them in the backyard but that area is lower and has been amended more.

Sugar baby? We grew them last year and I've begun planting for this year. They are tasty!! When ripe, they're a dark, dark green, almost black, in some cases, and about the size of a bowling ball or a tad larger.

We also have a Missouri heritage watermelon that we're growing again this year, as well. Another good one is the Carolina, but that one gets big. Really big.

Also it's best not to pick them after a rain. give them a few days and you will have less of the white stringiness.