Got behind planting… just about had the garden worked up well enough, then had to go to WashDC to see son, DIL, granddaughter for a week, then rain held me up for 3 weeks, so I was later than I’d wanted getting mine planted. Ripening faster that I can eat them now, and the rain we had this weekend is making some split.
Blacktail Mountain has done well - I wasn’t going to plant it, but wife chose it, and it’s been the star, so far.
Golden Midget… not terribly productive, but a decently tasty little melon, and no problem figuring out when they’re ready, as the rind turns yellow.
Have eaten a couple of Wilson Sweet that either split or got cut loose from their vines… really good!
Chou Cheh Red… had really low germination; only got one vine that survived… produced three tiny little melons about the size of a Nerf football. One was rotten, haven’t cut the others yet. Don’t think I’ll plant that one again.
Have had a couple of Orangeglo that started rotting prematurely, but have one in the house right now that should be good; more out there in the patch. It’ll be the first yellow-fleshed watermelon I’ve eaten in 50 years.
Several Halbert Honey melons out there looking close to being ripe, and one small one I picked two days ago is the next one I plan to cut after I finish eating what’s in the fridge right now.
Have one HUGE Georgia Rattlesnake that I’ll probably pick this week. Another one that had started to rot is cut up and in the fridge… super tasty!
Wibb… I’m not sure what it looks like, but there are several that I know are not the above-named varieties, so I’m guessing that’s what they are. Have a couple in the house, sitting on AC vents. Hope to break into one soon.
Charleston Gray… these were planted really late - replants in places where others didn’t come up, or died. They’ve set melons like crazy, and some are pretty big, but their vines are dying, and I suspect many of those melons won’t ripen.
There are some random Crimson Sweet and Orange Tendersweet melons out there somewhere, but things got so jumbled as the season went on, I won’t know which is which until I cut 'em.
Darrel sent me a half-dozen Kholodok seeds… got two to germinate… so far I’ve seen one melon, but there may be more hiding among the vines, grass, and pigweed. Wintermelon and King Winter have set a bunch of melons… looking forward to watermelon at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and maybe New Year!
Snow Mass honeydews have been good; way better than the Dulce we grew last year.
Glenn at Sandhill Preservation sent a free packet of ‘Old Timey TN Muskmelon’ seed… those suckers are huge! 12-15 lb elongate, football shaped cantaloupes, and a bunch on each vine… I’m not a cantaloupe fan, but my wife says it tastes better than most she’s had.
Picked 3 to sample tonight. From left to right is Sangria, Starbrite, then Summer Flavor 720. All 3 of these were excellent melons. Sangria and Summerflavor 720 was better than Starbrite, but I would have ate a bunch of it if I hadn’t tasted the other two. My melons are really good this year thanks to hot weather and no rain. Unfortunately that means I’ve had to water a lot of trees. I have a lot of watermelons getting ripe quick, I might have to take a big batch up and feed the high school football team.
Just cut that Strawberry. Perfect! Flavorful, crisp-textured and very sweet. (Sugar spots don’t lie!) Everything, in brief, that a watermelon should be. Still my favorite cultivar of all time. And I do think I will devote myself entirely to it from now on, saving seed and maybe seeing if I can select for a little more regularity in shape. (Of course, when a melon tastes like this, who cares if it’s a little irregular?)
We also popped open the Orangeglo a couple of days ago. It was ripe—and pretty (sorry, negelcted to take pics)—but highly disappointing flavor-wise. Rather bland and soft-textured; would’ve gone to mush in 2-3 more days. We tried orange-fleshed melons many years ago (can’t remember what variety, but it wasn’t Orangeglo), and mushiness/mealiness was a problem with those, too. Probably great in some areas, but maybe not here. (I’ve got more in the patch, including one ready to come in today; so we’ll see if some of those are better) Here, Strawberry is still king. Fortunately, several more are in the queue, with two coming in today. They may or may not be as good as this one, but after several years of growing it, I’ve yet to meet a bad Strawberry. Provided I’ve harvested them at the right time, they’ve all ranged from pretty good to superb; no other 'melon has shown such consistency in my experience.
Addendum: Best orange 'melon I ever tried was a tiny Japanese watermelon called Kaho. If I harvested at the right time—and I had a difficult time judging them—they were usually sweet. Still had tendency to get soft, though; I think the harvesting window for optimum texture was very small, and they went overripe very quickly. That might be the case with Orangeglo—and the others—, too: I might not have the trick of harvesting them at the right time. Still wouldn’t have helped the low sugar content, though.
Well, I kept 1/2 of it and put it in the fridge. Summerflavor 720 is an unbelievably great watermelon, no doubt about it. It will always be one that I will grow. The only drawback on this melon in my patch is the number of melons it puts on. Big stripe, Starbrite, and Sangria definitely outproduced this melon this year, maybe double the production from Big Stripe. It really doesn’t matter to me, because I have more than I will sell and give away, but it might matter to someone wanting to maximize production. To be quite honest, so many of the people buying my watermelons are used to buying a watermelon from Walmart or Dillons, any of the 5 varieties of melons I grow are a very big step up from those! Kind of like going from a round steak to a ribeye.
Yeah yellow and orange flesh melons have a very short window from not ripe to overripe. In general they have a more grainy texture than red varieties.The orangeglo is not as sweet as other melons but it has a unique flavor that a lot of people like.
That is definitely something that has caused growers to drop it. The first year I planted it, I had poor production, but the last 2 years I have had amazing production. The first year I got seed from twilley, and have changed to seedway the last 2 years. Don’t know if that is the reason or I have just got better at growing that variety.
I also grew Summerflavor 720 and my experience this year is that it produced on par with Big Stripe and Starbrite. The real big dog is Summerflavor produced twice as many 30 lb+ melons as the others. I had very few melons under 25 lbs from 720.
Very interesting, I wonder if it is a zone thing. I’ve only weighed a few of my 720’s and they were 30-32lbs, most of my big stripes are 35+, with a couple going 40. My Big stripes started getting ripe about a week before the other 3 varieties too. I will have to look at my dads patch 1.5 hours west of me and see how his compared amongst each other.
I used to place my melons on thin blocks of styrofoam, because the water would just roll off of it and create no room for moisture underneath the melon. I hung my Charentais in nets. They never touched the ground.
This 15.8-lb Orangeglo is much sweeter than the first one. I left it on the vine for an extra couple of days after the tendril dried, and this might have helped sweeten it. Flesh held its texture better than expected, though still softer than I prefer. . . but I’m not going to complain! Anyway, I thought that it might be a pretty good one because, when I harvested it, the cut stem oozed a drop of “honey”—often a sign of sweetness. The two Strawberries harvested at the same time—an 18- and a 21-pounder—also showed this promising sign.
