Sweet Success with Cantaloupes

Image Gallery By growing your own melons, you’ll enjoy fruit with unique flavors in many different sizes and colors, such as 4 1/2 –inch diameter Charentais varieties, which are beloved for their exceptional flavor. WILLIAM ADAMS

June/July 2006

Tuesday, 17 October 2006

By Barbara Pleasant

Grow unique melon varieties and enjoy luscious vine-ripened flavors.

If you want to start a summer day off just right, take a spoon and half a slightly chilled cantaloupe, go outside and sit on the steps. Now, eat.

Juicy, sweet and supremely satisfying, cantaloupes are good for you, too. A 1 cup serving of deep orange-fleshed cantaloupe provides a full day’s quota of vitamins A and C — even children think it’s a tasty treat.

Want to grow some in your garden? That’s a great idea, because many of the best-tasting cantaloupes are too delicate to ship, though they often hold up well on short rides to and from the local farmer’s market.

The melons that most of us call “cantaloupes” are actually muskmelons, which have distinctive netted skins and a musky odor. Botanically speaking, “true” cantaloupes, such as ‘Prescott Fond Blanc,’ have little or no netting and often have prominent ribs. Both types of melons are in the cucurbit family, which includes cucumbers, pumpkins and squash.

In keeping with their Middle Eastern ancestry, these melons crave warmth and sunlight, so early summer is the best time to start a melon patch.

Gardeners can grow varieties with green flesh, orange flesh or a mixture of both colors. Fruit size also varies considerably from one variety to another. Softball-size ‘Minnesota Midget’ (orange flesh) or ‘Eden Gem’ (light green flesh) will scramble up a trellis with little help, making good use of space in a small garden; or you can let the rampant vines of ‘Old-Time Tennessee' sprawl into a calf-deep green carpet, punctuated with lumpy 12 pound fruits bigger than footballs.

Try Something New

Growing great melons by any name sometimes humbles even the most experienced gardener.

“Melons are finicky, and success is never guaranteed,” says Amy Goldman, who is the author of Melons for the Passionate Grower (Artisan, 2002).

A dedicated seed saver, Goldman has grown hundreds of varieties, and she thinks every gardener should join the fun. “People don’t know how good a melon can be, because the commercial ones at the supermarket are not fine-flavored varieties to start with, and they are harvested when they are still green,” she says. “Melons don’t get any sweeter after they are harvested. In a garden, you can leave them on the vine as long as possible, so they can pick up that last surge of sucrose.”