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National Gardening Association Missing out on Melons?

by Emily Stetson

I've just discovered that I've been missing out on melons. Sure, I've grown melons, and I must say I've been pretty successful at it, despite the rigors of gardening first in the Southeast (where melon diseases run rampant) and then in the North (where it's tough to get the darn sun-lovers to ripen in time). But the varieties I've chosen, while good, never strayed from the conservative cantaloupe/muskmelon clan. From the reports I've been hearing recently, however, they aren't the best for melon flavor. Gardeners and growers in the know say that honor goes to their more exotic cousins, the specialty melons.

With their strikingly colored rinds and flesh, odd shapes and sizes and practically indescribable flavors, these "other" melons have been savored for generations in the Mideast, Europe and the Orient. Don't let their exotic background scare you off, though. "Some of the specialty types are the perfect melons for growing at home in this country," says Jim Waltrip, wholesale manager of Petoseed Company, Inc. in Saticoy, California, which markets 95% of its specialty melon seed overseas. "Their flavor is absolutely delicious. You know you're eating a melon when you bite into one of these fruits." Here's a rundown of some of the best of these garden-friendly exotics.

Taste the Tropics

Tops for sweet melon flavor are the Mediterranean melons, also referred to as tropical, Galia, Middle Eastern or Israeli types. There are a whole slew of varieties that fall into this somewhat loose category, from the open-pollinated, late-maturing types to shorter-season hybrids like Gallicum and Passport. In general, though, these are oval to round two- to six-pound melons that turn from green to yellow or buff-hued as they ripen. Most have a pale green to white, soft flesh that is extremely sweet, very aromatic and has a strong melon taste. Depending on the variety, the rind may be smooth, crackly looking or finely netted; some types even have wide, green sutures. Most fruits slip from the stem with a little pressure when mature.

Flavor is what really sets these melons apart from their cantaloupe cousins, though. It's the sugar content that does it. While most cantaloupes are in the range of 13% sugars, the tropical melons regularly reach 16%, even going as high as 20% under ideal conditions. Improved hybrids, such as Galia, Rocky Sweet, A-One, Gallicum and Passport, carry the added benefit of disease resistance that's so crucial to a successful melon harvest in much of the U.S.

Gallicum has proved itself even in the Southeast, where disease pressures make melons typically a tough row to hoe. In a recent trial of 10 melon varieties at North Carolina State University, Gallicum rated superior to cantaloupes such as Superstar, Magnum 45 and Classic in resisting mildew. A-One, a Sakata introduction, also got high marks.

Out in northern California, where the hot, dry conditions are most similar to the Mediterranean melons' home ground, market gardener Janice Thompson has had excellent results growing and marketing tropicals. "Ogen, a late-maturing, open-pollinated variety, does really well," Thompson says. "It's a sweet, delightful melon—but we like the hybrid Galia even better. It's more consistent in production and has less of a tendency to split." The flavor favorite, though, is Fruit Punch, an aromatic, green-fleshed, heavily netted hybrid with resistance to powdery mildew.

For northern gardeners, Passport, developed by breeder J. Brent Loy at the University of New Hampshire and first offered last year to home gardeners, packages tropical flavor in a five- to six-pound netted melon that matures in just 75 days. "My goal was to breed a melon that was both early and had a little better shelf life than some of the other Mediterranean varieties," Loy explains. Passport packs in tolerance to anthracnose and gummy stem blight as well. With such a quick-maturing variety, Loy cautions, you need to harvest daily. "Some gardeners miss the peak harvest because they don't realize how fast these early types come on," he notes. Mediterranean melons should be picked as soon as the skin takes on a buff hue or turns yellow and the stem will slip with force from the vine. A deep orange rind means the fruits are overripe.

The French Connection

The French, always particular about their produce, have their own breed of a better melon: the Charentais. Though the traditional varieties of these European favorites have been available to gardeners in the U.S. for some time, they're still a rarity in home gardens and roadside markets. These are round, grapefruit-sized—weighing 2 ½ pounds or less—melons with deep orange, sweet flesh sometimes described as having a caramel taste and aroma. "It's a mellow flavor, more like a fine wine," says Dick Meiners of Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine. "When you taste it, you know it's a finer flavor than you can get in any supermarket." The more traditional-looking varieties such as Prior, Savor, Charmel and the original Charentais are faintly ribbed with gray-green skin and dark green sutures, while some of the newer hybrids—Flyer, Pancha and Early Chaca—are netted, more like a cantaloupe, and have lighter skin. All mature in 85 days or less (Flyer and Early Chaca produce fruit in under 70 days) and most varieties are tolerant to fusarium and powdery mildew, making them particularly well suited to the North and Northwest. The only trick to these types is to pick them at the right time.

When the rind develops a tan color, most varieties of this type are overripe. The fruits should be cut from the vine when there's a subtle cracking of the stem and a paling of the small, long-stemmed leaf nearest the fruit. And once you begin picking, keep at it, every day, or the fruit may overripen.

From the Orient

The doors are just opening on the melon market from the Far East, offering American gardeners a whole different class of melons. The most common type throughout the Orient is a small, oval melon that weighs in at a pound or less. Its white rind is smooth, with no netting, turning yellow as the fruit matures, and the flesh is creamy white and crisp, more like an apple. Pinetree's Dick Meiners, who offers Sprite, the most highly recommended Oriental variety of this type available to home gardeners in this country, describes the flavor as "exceptionally sweet" and considers it one of the top picks for his garden. "A single hill will produce in excess of 100 fruits, maturing about 70 days after transplant," he maintains. Picked at maturity, when about two-thirds of the rind has turned yellow, the melons will store for a week or more without losing their quality. Though the flesh will soften somewhat as it ages, it never becomes mushy or even as soft as a typical cantaloupe.

North Carolina State University Extension Vegetable Specialist Jonathan Schultheis, who has successfully grown this highly disease-resistant hybrid (tolerant to downy mildew and resistant to fusarium wilt and powdery mildew) in trials in the Piedmont, suggests storing the fruits in the refrigerator for a few days, then peeling them and eating them as you would an apple. "This melon is very different from what we're accustomed to, but we're going to see a lot more interest in these Oriental types in the future. They're just too good to pass up."

Growing for Keeps

Of all the specialty varieties, the honeydew, crenshaw, casaba and Yellow Canary melons are probably most familiar. If you haven't yet tried growing them, you've no doubt seen them in the supermarket—those big, oval or football-shaped globes with a hard, waxy green to pale yellow rind that may be wrinkled or smooth, housing thick, juicy, white, pale green or salmon flesh. When picked at their prime, the flavor is sweet, sometimes spicy, ranging in texture from firm to "meltingly soft."

As with all melons, the amount of sugar in the fruit at picking is the amount you'll taste when you cut it open, no matter how long you let the melon "ripen" in your kitchen. And since most growers pull melons off the vine well before they've developed their maximum sweetness, whatever you buy from the store will pale in comparison to the home garden version. For flavor, you just have to grow your own. But with a typical requirement of 110 to 120 days of hot, sunny weather, these "keeper" melons (prized for their long shelf life) have often been out of reach for gardeners in cold climates, and their susceptiblity to cracking and disease have made them a tough crop for humid-prone regions such as the Northwest and Southeast.

"Because these melons take so long to grow, there's more that can go wrong with them," notes NCSU's Jonathan Schultheis. "Powdery and downy mildews are a big problem down here, along with splitting. If you get wet weather late in the season, you're in trouble, because your melons will invariably crack." Fortunately for gardeners, the push is on for greater disease resistance and earlier varieties that can get out of the ground before weather and infections take their toll.

Marygold, a recent open-pollinated casaba developed at the Maryland Agriculture Station in Baltimore, is a good 10 days earlier than other casabas, ripening 92 days from seed and just 72 from transplant. Plus it's resistant to fusarium (race 2) and powdery mildew. The three- to four-pound fruits have firm, thick white flesh packaged in a bright yellow, slightly wrinkled rind, and are high in sugars.

Gold King is another "keeping" melon that marries disease resistance with early harvest and good flavor. It's a hybrid with

the characteristics of a Jaune Canari (Yellow Canary) melon—oval in shape, bright yellow, smooth skin and white, firm, juicy flesh -plus the advantages of powdery mildew resistance and a maturity of just 90 days (a full 20 days earlier than the open-pollinated Yellow Canary). The four-pound fruits have a sweet, pear-like flesh.

At the University of New Hampshire, Brent Loy is working on a crack-free honeydew that matures even earlier than his previous introduction—Earlidew. But at 75 days to maturity, fusarium-resistant Earlidew still reigns as the best honeydew for the North. Unlike most honeydews, it slips when ripe, like a cantaloupe. This green-skinned, green-fleshed variety is a prime choice for the Southeast as well, as it enables gardeners to get a good harvest before the disease pressures really set in. Also recommended is Honeybrew, a 90-day hybrid that has the added advantage of powdery mildew resistance. And for an early crenshaw-type melon, a good bet is Honeyshaw, a 90-day hybrid cross between a honeydew and a crenshaw that has gotten good reviews from taste tests on the West Coast. This melon has the typical crenshaw characteristics of a soft, sweet, "melting" salmon-pink flesh in a hefty, eight-pound, oval fruit that turns from dark green to lightly mottled yellow at maturity.

Though the specifics differ somewhat among varieties, there are certain key signs to look for when harvesting these keeping types. As prime ripeness approaches, the tendril leaf closest to the fruit may begin to wither, and the melon will become extremely hard to pierce with a fingernail. The skin may become slightly waxy, almost tacky, or develop faint tan lines on the surface. Brighter skin colors can also be a good indication, but you may have to experiment a bit with the fruits to determine just how much yellowing is best.

Melon Musts

If you can grow cantaloupes and muskmelons, you can grow any of these specialty types. They take the same basic care as muskmelons, requiring warm days, adequate water and sufficient nutrients to support a vigorous, healthy vine.

Warmth is crucial. Most varieties need 80 to 100 days of 80oF daytime temperatures. You can shave a week or so off the days-to-maturity figures by starting the seeds inside, then transplanting the two-week-old seedlings into black plastic mulch (the new IRT-76 hybrid mulches, which heat up the soil better and retain heat at night, work even better for melons, but cost a bit more). Row covers placed over the transplants will help trap the heat and—if left on until the majority of the female flowers are opened—will discourage the striped cucumber beetle and aphids from transmitting bacterial wilt and viruses.

Don't rush the season, though, cautions UNH breeder Brent Loy. "Most gardeners start melons too early. If you put out a four-leaf transplant in a tiny Jiffy pot, it just won't do well—it will flower too early and won't put on the vegetative growth you need to support a healthy plant." He recommends transplanting at the one-to two-leaf stage, waiting until the soil temperature is at least 70oF to set them out.

Good fertility is also important. Loy uses 10-10-10 at planting time, but says compost or manure will work fine, too. Side-dressing with a high-phosphorus fertilizer (organic gardeners could use fish emulsion or manure tea) at transplant time helps promote root growth, but all the experts caution against high-nitrogen fertilizers. Too much nitrogen kills melon flavor by causing the fruits to size up too quickly and accumulate fluids rapidly. What you end up with—if the fruit doesn't split first - is a melon that looks good but tastes "green."

Go easy with the water, too. While it's true melons need about an inch of water per week over the growing season, they'll suffer more from overwatering than from too little moisture. Excess water means waterlogged or cracked fruit. It's best to keep the moisture uniform while the vines and fruits are growing, then taper off the water during the last two to three weeks of growth, as the melons begin to color up. This is especially true for specialty melons, which can be somewhat more drought-tolerant than their cantaloupe counterpart.

Casabas, along with the crenshaw, canary and honeydew varieties, are sometimes referred to as "keeping" melons, because they have a longer shelf life than other melons. Open-pollinated Golden Beauty, the most well-known casaba, has distinctive ridges and a rich, golden yellow rind when mature. Its firm, sweet, juicy flesh has a spicy flavor. A big melon, it needs a long, hot growing season to develop its sugars and must be cut from the vine when ripe.

Despite this traditional Spanish, mottled-skinned melon's penchant for a long season, Rob Johnston of Johnny's Selected Seeds has been successfully trialing it in Maine. Translated, Piel de Sapo means "frog's skin," but its name in this country—Santa Claus casaba—refers instead to the fact that it stores well into November. Johnston describes this unique casaba as having a "mellow, refreshing taste—not sweet like a honeydew, or even quite as sweet as the more typical casabas—but very good."

Older open-pollinated Mediterranean varieties such as Ogen are popular in areas that mimic the long, hot, dry growing conditions of the Mideast. For best flavor, pick these melons as they turn from green to golden yellow, before they slip easily from the vine.

Galia, the first named hybrid variety of the Mediterranean or tropical melons, is still a standard for good taste of the Middle Eastern types. The soft flesh inside the lightly netted fruits is exceedingly sweet with a flavor that some gardeners liken to that of a banana, while others refer to it as "intensely perfumed and spicy sweet." At a maturity of 85 days, it will do well even in areas with cool summer nights.

The Charentais is the original French melon, known for its deep orange flesh and fine, mellow, honey-like flavor. The traditional varieties are smooth-skinned, gray and deeply sutured; newer hybrids often look more like a small netted cantaloupe.

Attention to harvesttime—cutting the fruits from the stem before the rind turns tan or the melon slips—is crucial.

Copyright NGA

Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.

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