Anyone doing anything new/interesting with melons this year? I’ve sorta tried a few times with poor success due to cucumber beetle. Years ago I had good luck with Sleeping Beauty. This year I am deploying cucumber beetle lures (from vivagrow) and planting red amaranth for a trap crop. Due to close proximity of honeybee hives spraying is pretty much no go, but Surround with Spinosad might be useful. I’m already intending to use it on fruit trees (assuming this freeze leaves me any flowers), so it’s already ready to go.
I’m trying a bunch of mini/small cantaloupe/muskmelon types this year. I have an idea to develop my own strain/land race, but that’s just me dreaming big. I have seeds for Sleeping Beauty, Ice Cream, Jenny Lind, Golden Jenny, Trifecta, and couple others I can’t remember off the top of my head. I like the idea of single serve mini melons! A scoop of ice cream in the middle…
Yum. A lot of these varieties were bred by the late Merlyn Niedens. I found a brief article he wrote about 15 years ago: Saving Our Seeds: Resources and Links
My daughter wants me to grow some watermelon, and I want her interested in the garden so we picked a few out from Southern Exposure today: Sugar Baby, Golden Midget, Chou Cheh, and Blacktail Mountain. Hopefully these varieties are a bit more compact and won’t swallow my whole vegetable garden. Plus smaller fruit tends to ripen earlier, better chance of ripe fruit before pests/disease come thru.
Good timing for this post, I had just sown a bunch of melon seeds in the greenhouse.
I’m going to be doing some of that type in my greenhouse again this year after my one trial vine in there did much better than the outside ones last year. I’m just using saved seeds from Minnesota Midget, though this is my third year collecting my own seed from open-pollinated vines, and last year one of the outside ones had different looking melons (not as good tasting, so didn’t save), so maybe I’m making my own landrace as well!
I grew several of those watermelons last year… Blacktail Mtn. was far better than any Sugar Baby I ever grew. Golden Midget was fun, and reasonably productive/tasty.
Chou Cheh Red sucked…low production, poor ripening, little flavor, and most were the size of my fist, or smaller.
I’ve had poor luck with melons as well, but I did better last year with a lot of amaranth growing near by (neighboring plot at a community garden). I actually got 2 cantaloupes and a bunch of cucumbers, although the lopes never got very sweet.
This year I’m going to try Collective Farm Woman, a Ukrainian heirloom along with some other Ukrainian veggies. I think I’m also going to try spraying surround on my cukes and melons a bit since I’ve heard from others it helps make the cucumber beetles down. I guess they just don’t like the texture of something. I actually had really good results using surround on eggplant seedlings to keep down the flea beetles, so I’m definitely a believer in using surround on more stuff now.
I’m trying to get more space at the community garden and if I do I may try a water melon or two as well.
best melon last year was Hannah’s choice, 2nd best was charentais, best melon the year before was earli dew (hugely productive but ripened all at once, annoying). so I’m doing those three again. I’m putting them in planters where they can spread out under my trees to maximize use of space. that worked great last year
I’m growing Ambrosia, Charentais, Noir des Carmes, Boule D’Or.
I may try Sugar Baby because I have seeds from last year, but no large watermelon, they don’t do well here.
When my kids were young we grabbed some seeds of a very old muskmelon variety sold at a local store. They grew good until almost ripe then powdery mildew wiped them out.
Two more weeks and we would have had a crop. My youngest daughter was in tears.
Tried it again last year and grew Solstace hybrid. Crop was great and the flavor was good. No issues with mildew. I will never plant heirloom melons again unless I try Charantais. I need a hybrid that offers mildew resistance.
I’m growing hydroponic yellow lemon drop watermelons. They have a yellow skin (some may grow green) and yellow flesh. They are absolutely delicious. I had melons ready within 65-70 days of my seeds germinating and the plants can be managed to be small but still productive. In my small 2x4 area, I constantly have 6-8 melons (1.5-3 pounds each) growing at any one time. The only down side to them is they are prone to splitting so you need consistent watering.
I have some seeds on hand but not sure if I will get around to planting them this year. ‘Blacktail Mountain’ and ‘Bozeman’ watermelons and an F1 canary type from Johnny’s called ‘Brilliant’.
I’ve tried heirloom cantaloupes and honeydews but they really seem to flounder after a few weeks in the ground. I’ve not paid close attention to my failures, though. One heirloom/OP variety with white flesh sorta ripened for me summer 2020… but we only got to try one. The neighbor kids and I both thought it tasted bland so I haven’t been interested in re-growing. It rotted quickly after becoming ripe, similar to what the reviewer says on the listing.
Reading people’s comments, I have the thought I have had often before. How did people grow stuff before modern pesticides? Have we killed off too many predatory insects? Is it increased plantings leading to more pests? Some stuff is the fault of spreading diseases/pests with trade, but still…
Many heirlooms originated in particular climates where they likely still are relatively pest-free when grown there, and people used to grow whatever had been grown in their area for centuries, giving crops time to adapt to the local conditions. For the last century or more we’ve spread crops and pests all over the world at an unprecedented rate, relying on pesticides rather than crops being adapted to local conditions. But I still say better to spread everything everywhere and keep what works than be limited only to local heirlooms, even if they might be better adapted.
Planted an assortment of mini-muskmelons and a few watermelons this week. I’m going to hang some cucumber beetle lures to see if that helps with pest problems. Perfect planting weather we’re having, plenty of rain!
Decided to try a watermelon in the greenhouse this year after my cantaloupe test went well last year. I’m also doing the Minnesota midget again. I saw this one when I was looking for other seeds and couldn’t resist giving it a try even though it doesn’t look like the greatest melon:
Planted them about a week ago and already at 100% germination, here are a couple:
For some reason I had several watermelon seedlings croak while under lights, I assume from damping off. All my other seedlings are doing great—squash, cucumbers, broccoli, lettuce onions, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers. Any idea why many of the several varieties of watermelons are failing? In commercial starter, sterilized individual pots, heated seed mat, then under fluorescent lights in basement in upper 60s. Now moving things out to deck by day to harden off. I bring them inside at night or chipmunks dig around in the pots.
Watermelons have to be grown with reduced water. They do not like their roots in standing water or even in very moist soil. Also, must be grown in sterile seed start mix, NOT common potting soil.
I did this one year. Definitely helped some—but more on the cucumbers than the Cucumis melo. Though the beetles were suppressed, enough still got through to transmit bacterial wilt to the melons. Of course, I think that was one of our rainy seasons; and it might do better in a year of more reasonable rainfall.
Might work to some extent on spotted cuke beetles—as they’re more cosmpolitan feeders—but don’t think it will draw species like the striped. I believe some of the reports of amaranth drawing cucumber beetles are based on people mistaking pigweed flea beetles for striped cucumber beetles. Of course, I hope I’m wrong. I’ve a long row of amanranth sowed out this year, so I’ll pay attention to what shows up.
I hope this works for you. I’ve tried trapping with no luck. I used a commerical one—it may have been the Vivagrow—with a lure that smelled of cinnamon. I caught a few beetles on the sticky trap provided, but many more hapless non-target insects. I also tried homemade drowning traps----yellow-painted milk jugs with series of hole-punch holes to admit the beetles—and baited them with various botanical oils that are supposed to be highly attractive to diabroticids. They just laughed and said, “You kiddin’, bub? Not when we got all these juicy cuke vines around!”
