My Escorials are coming in now - quite good
The others have either anthracnose or root knot [or both] and haven’t done so well
Yay! I am finally harvesting ripe Israeli melons. They are so good!! My little girl woke up this morning and was getting ready for school and came in and asked “Do you have any of my favorite melon for my new lunchbox?” (First grade) well, of course I did and she came back from school saying that she had shared it and told all her friends that she grew it in the garden. 
she also took her first Carolina Belle peach to school to show off. She loves gardening.
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My muskmelons were a complete failure this year. The roots are dying from something which causes the plants to slowly wilt and die. Maybe fusarium of verticillium. My savor charantais melon is still holding up but starting to show signs. Watermelons still look healthy. Anyone else have similar experiences? If the problems are fungi in the soil I think I will have to give up on the muskmelons unless I try grafting next year. Dangit.
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Nobody grafts melons. What would you graft them to and how
would you graft them.?
Mine turned out to have root knot nematodes last year - so far this year they look OK
Seeing the first fuzzies now
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The Japanese have been doing it for a long time.
Lots of research out there on the topic…here is just one.
Seems like watermelon grafted to bottle gourd is most common.
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Has anybody in the US ever done it? I’d like to see how they do it,
and the results.
Are you controlling cuke beetles, they spread a bacterial wilt disease.
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I have not seen a single cuke beetle and i have been looking. Upon closer inspection it looks like a bad case of root knot nematodes that perhaps increased susceptibility to some sort of root rot. The dead roots are very thick and lumpy, and rotton.
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Richard Hassell at Clemson U has been doing a lot of work on it. I’m still learning about results and methods. From what I have read, it has improved yield in some trials but sometimes at the cost of lower fruit quality.
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I love to grow a Melon from Israel that much of the world knows as Ha’ogen, it smells like Mango, it has a flavor when fully and properly ride that is intense and indescribable, inside when fully ripe they are greenish. Skin and rind are very thin, skin is a golden yellow with strips. The problem with it is that pests easily attack them and easily find them, usually before they are even fully ripe. When they are not properly ripe they taste like American cantaloupe with no sweetness. So far they are my favorite melon.
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Melon Watch time again
The first Diplomat melon is showing signs of turning color
Last year, turned out I picked a day early, need to wait
i have tried
- swan lake - tasted pretty good once super ripe but wouldn’t grow again, was like a hybrid of honeydew and canteloupe
- green nutmeg- tasted really sweet when super ripe like a regular cantaloupe should taste but even better for some reason, was really juicy and had a green flavor which i probably think made it taste better than the orange varieties, but was different from plant to plant, one plant had very good melons and one had melons that were’nt sweet at all, so plant alot of seeds if plan on growing this one
- ginkaku hybrid - super crispy super sweet yellow skin white fleshed korean melon, one of the best melons ive ever had
- collective farm woman (burpee)- very good melon had crispy texture but the consistency of a pear, really delicious melon, mine never turned yellow on the outside and one melon had rotted all the way through to the bottom without ever turning yellow, after i learned this i picked the next melon beside of it and it was one of favorites
- kajari melon- was a beautiful indian melon that had fair canteloupe texture and flavor was really similar to the green nutmeg but had thicker flesh
in descending order my favorites were probably the collective farm woman and ginkaku because of their unique texture
then the green nutmeg and kajari for their fair flavored canteloupe type soft melting flesh
and last was swan lake for average flavor even though very sweet was not my favorite, maybe the other melons were just that good but plan on trying more
all the seeds i got were from baker creek but the collective farm woman was from burpee and the ginkaku melon was from kitazawa just incase you were wondering
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That’s a funny translation of “Kolkhoznitsa” (Колхозница in Russian), meaning a female member of Kolkhoz (a Soviet collective farm).
This variety was bred in Southern Russia in the midle of WW2 (in 1943) and has been very popular ever since due to its eating quality. A funny statement from a Russian description: “The description of all diseases and pests that affect the variety Kolkhoznitsa can fill up a voluminous encyclopedia.”
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Got it! Year’s first melon. I saw the color, went to check the scent, and I was holding it in my hand. Slipped right off the vine
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Cantelope?
wow intersting explanation, love the descriptive list, nothing seemed to bother them, here in zone 7 NC except a few deer eating a few tender leaves, they never eat the whole patch so i don’t mind
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I have grafted many different things but not muskmelons. It certainly seems possible if you can find something similar that has some built in immunity to the soil born disease. If you try it I would like to here your results.
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They are very good. First had them in NYC when I lived there.
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