One of my Charleston Gray vine set 3 fruit. They grew to almost a lb before two of three stopped growing and started to shrivel. Wish the vine aborted the fruit at a smaller size.
@thecityman In addition, one of my two cantaloupe vines started to wilt and died a slow death. I suspected cucumber beetles did it in.
Jubimax – a Jubilee variant from seed from @Stephen03 .
It was excellent! I should have measured it, but it had be at least 20 inches long.
I asked my son if he wanted to go cut some watermelons. He jumped up and said, “Yeah! This is one of my favorite things of the year.”
We then choose a pocketknife from the small collection my dad gave him, and off we go. I told him I had to have a pic to keep the streak alive. This is year 4 of him doing the cutting. He’s now 11.
Sad. Sorry:cry:
Just so you know it isn’t just you, I have a few melons that did that this year as well. As for your cantaloupes, I’ve told you before that I find them more difficult on average than watermelons because the plants often just die, as yours did. You may well be right about the cucumber beetle being the culprit- but not only because they may have bored into the stem and killed the plant that way…they also spread diseases that kill cantaloupe vines just as you described. The two I get hit with most are downy mildew (similar to powdery mildew but without the silver color on top) and bacterial wilt. You should google those and see if its what your plant looked like. Sadly, not much can be done if it is! Good luck.
Kevin,
I believe the bacteria wilt on my cantaloupe and cucumber plants had striped cucumber beetles as culprits that spread the disease. We saw many of them this year inside flowers of our summer squash, cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes.
Fortunately, this disease does not affect watermelons. Thank goodness.
I had a good year for cantaloupes, my watermelons were all off. Ever since I’ve moved, I can’t seem to repeat my experience growing large watermelon in my previous house.
I’m waiting for this Charentais melon to ripen
These pretty melon pics are making me jealous! Still no melons here; I’m pretty behind this year. But despite a few hiccups—including a larger-than-usual number of fruit abortions and the loss of two vines to some sort of crown rot, which I’ve never had happen before, even during much rainier seasons than this—the vines look relatively healthy and have a decent number of fruit that should make it before cool weather sets in.
Here are some that I’m impatiently awaiting:
And, despite the fact that I said I was planting Strawberry and only Strawberry, I did also plant some Orangeglo. (Why, yes, I am impressionable! 
) I’m also trying a few Leelanau Sweetglo (an Orangeglo/Crimson Sweet cross). They’re patterned like Orangeglo, but are round like CS; they look like they’re going to be icebox-sized.
Some of the Strawberries and Orangeglos are fairly respectable in size, but no giants—so I don’t think I’ll come close to beating my 42-pound personal record… I just hope they make it . . . and they taste good!
Curious thing: it’s mid-August and I’ve not seen a single striped cucumber beetle and only a few spotted cucumber beetles on my cucurbitaceous crops; this is unprecedented in my experience. Anyone else seeing a drop in cuke beetle populations this year?
My hope is that I managed to eliminate much of the local overwintering population by spraying very late into the season last year with a rotation of neem + karanja oil and spinosad. And as very few of my neighbors keep gardens of any extent, my cucurbits should’ve been the principal draw/trap for all the local beetles. Such is my hope, anyway.
It could just be a cyclical thing, though. And I’m sure that if I decide to plant Kajari and/or other C. melo melons again next year (and I really wish I had done so this year, dang it!), the beetles will be sure to blow back in—with bacterial wilt in tow.
One last note: this one regarding @Auburn Bill’s pointy-tipped 'melons. Certain cultivars, for whatever reason (atavism? very particular pollination needs or maybe less attractive flowers than other cultivars, leading to poor pollination?), seem to have a tendency to do this. Strawberry always throws out a few pointy to outright gourd-necked fruit, but none of the other cultivars I’ve grown has ever done this. Here is an extreme example.
Necks are reportedly a common feature of Art Combe’s “Ancient” watermelon, introduced to the seed market by Baker Creek. I’m not sure I buy its origin story, but it’s an interesting melon. Anyone here ever grow it?
I think you’re on to something… the potted vine aborted the smallest one shown above and keeps dropping its female flowers without opening them, despite growing quite a bit taller. I think it decided the roots only could sustain two melons. Outdoor in-ground vines all have 4+ fruit, one has 6. So 5 gal pot might be too small for Minnesota midget at least, to maximize fruit numbers.
Nothing has ripened yet inside or out, but they are looking almost ready to start ripening soon…
Picked the first big stripe of the season yesterday. I was thinking it would be closer to the end of August, but the pig tail was dry and it was a darn good melon. I’m going to some checking, I might be headed to the farmers market this week with a load of melons.
Great job! I love Big Stripe. It’s a fabulous watermelon.
minnesota midget from my greenhouse. tasted the same as a store-bought cantaloupe so I may not grow it again but I think if I started them earlier they could be ready in July which might keep me growing them
How big was that?? Looks a lot bigger than any of mine
5-6" diameter. it popped from the vine on its own we found it loose in the hammock
Picked this one just now. It was a volunteer in our flower bed that I couldn’t bear to pull. It has 6-7 more big melons still on it.
First two melons came off the vine today, August 21: a 25.6 lb Orangeglo and an 18.8 lb Strawberry. Won’t have time to crack into them today, but wanted to take a moment to illustrate two things often talked about in terms of judging ripeness: field spots and sugar spots. Not all 'melons will display field spots under all conditions—the Orangeglo did not have one—but many 'melons do, and Strawberry is very reliable in this regard. Generally, a ripe Strawberry will have a nice cream-to-yellow field spot where the melon was resting on the ground. Frequently, a ripe and often very sweet watermelon will show what I (and presumably others—if we’re indeed talking about the same thing!) call “sugar spots”----tiny black dots on and around the field spot. These are sometimes scattered in appearance, at other times they are found in concentrated groupings (as illustrated below). They seem to be fungal in nature and presumably form where sugar has leached from the bottom of the watermelon. 'Melons that display such spots are, in my experience, usually ripe and good-tasting. Here is a pic of my Strawberry’s field spot (it has a more yellow cast in person) and a close-up of said sugar spots.
My initial indicator is always the tendril nearest the melon. If completely dead, I check for a field spot/sugar spots. I also thump the melon and listen (as another grower once explained) for a resonance similar to smartly thumping one’s chest—a sound neither too sharp (under-ripe) nor too dull (over-ripe). Since it lacked a field spot (or noticeable sugar spots; and I have seen them without a field spot) I judged the Orangeglo on the basis of tendrils and sound.
Now, I may cut into these two melons in the next couple of days and make a fool of myself 
. . . . but, in most cases, I have found these sound indicators of ripeness.
The Strawberry, as you may have noticed, is a little irregular in shape. As discussed above, this seems a quirk of the cultivar—and the only minor fault that (thus far!) I’ve found in it.
Hi, Vinod. I’ve always found it so—and have assumed that it indicates that the melon is still actively being fed by the vine. But hopefully others will chime in about this—as it seems like there is an exception to every rule.
I agree with @JeremiahT , the pigtail opposite of the the short vine that goes to the watermelon being completely dead is my #1 thing I look for in a ripe melon. It is hard for me to tell from your pic where this tendril is coming from on your plant, but it will be a brown/dark spike on my plant when ripe.
