melons

Growing melons

• Space individual plants 3 to 6 feet apart (3 feet for compact varieties). These space recommendations are for in-ground planting. In my EarthTainers, I crowd the plants and still get a good harvest.

• I discovered last year that rabbits like melon leaves, so beware!

• Before planting, add some general purpose fertilizer and compost to the soil.

• Melons love warm weather! I have had the most success growing them in sub irrigated containers such as Earthbox or EarthTainer. That way, the roots are warm, the vines have plenty of water at all times, and you can place the container where it will receive the most sun.

• Harvest: Canteloupe types will slip easily from the vine when ripe. With other melons, check the leaf nearest the fruit; when it begins to turn yellow, the fruit is ripe. For watermelons, they are ripe when the tendril nearest the fruit is dry and brown and the bottom side of the fruit is yellow. Harvest melons in the cool of the morning and immediately refrigerate. Melons do not ripen off the vine.

  PLEASE NOTE: The plants on my farm table have NOT been hardened off. They are straight from the greenhouse.
  You can do one of the following:
  1. Expose them gradually to outdoor conditions over a week
  -OR (as I do)-
  2. Plant them immediately and give them protection from excess sun, wind, and rain for a week or two.

Mini Love Hybrid

Watermelon
Compact plant, delicious fruit
All-America Selections (AAS) Winner 2017

This award-winning hybrid is super compact, so instead of the usual sprawling vines, you get a compact 3-foot by 3-foot spread, healthy foliage and flowers, and up to half a dozen delicious fruit on every plant.

The secret is terrific disease resistance. Mini Love stands up to anthracnose, a scourge of many other watermelon varieties, and the fruit has a thin rind that is strong enough to resist cracking and splitting. Within, the flesh is juicy sweet, dark red, aromatic, and simply mouthwatering.

Mini Love sets about 4 to 6 striped green-on-green melons per plant. Each weighs between 7 and 9 pounds, with a shape that varies from oval to round. Saves space in the garden (or on the patio) with smaller, more manageable fruit. Mini Love is out to win you over.

Tasty Bites

Charantais/Ananas
70-80 days. Delightfully sweet with a tropical twist, these mini melons are just right for 2 servings. The hard-working plants offer high yields of one pound, pale yellow-skinned melons with deep orange flesh offset with a green outer ring. Developed from a Charantais/Ananas cross, bringing out the best in both! F1 hybrid variety. (Territorial Seed)
These melons have produced very well for me and are the most delicious sweet flavor! I will be planting ‘Tasty Bites’ every year.

Sugar Cube

Cantaloupe
80 days. Coarsely netted, round, 2 pound fruit have juicy, deep orange flesh with a tremendous 14% Brix. Add an extended shelf life and you can keep these sweet, rich morsels close at hand for a personal-sized treat anytime. Expect to have a plentiful supply, as Sugar Cube’s unprecedented disease resistance keeps the reliable plants consistently productive. F1 hybrid variety. (Territorial Seed)
My experience with ‘Sugar Cube’ is that it is very sweet and worth growing, even though last year (2023) it did not produce as many fruits per plant as ‘Tasty Bites’.

Rainbow Sherbet
68-80 days. Three varieties of early maturing “icebox” watermelons with delicious pastel yellow, orange or pink flesh.
All are F1 hybrids: ‘Yellow Baby’ (yellow fruit), ‘Tiger Baby’ (pink fruit), and ‘New Orchid’ (orange fruit).
These extra fancy beauties weigh in at only 4 to 7 pounds with thin, green striped rinds and dense, crisp flesh. Their party colors and refreshing sweet, sherbet-like taste make them wonderful everyday treats or gorgeous summer desserts. (Renee’s Garden)
(These will be available and labeled separately.)

New Orchid

80 days. Sweet, bright orange flesh. F1 hybrid.
Beautiful appearance inside and out. New Orchid's outstanding, sherbet-like taste makes it a real people pleaser. The fruits are a medium-large "icebox" size, avg. 7–9 lb., and oval-round. The skin has dark green, high-contrast stripes. Avg. 1–2 fruits/plant. (NOTE: This is the same orange fruited watermelon as listed above in the Rainbow Sherbet collection. (Johnny’s Selected Seeds)

Sugar Baby

85 days. Popular heirloom variety produces 6-10 lb. fruits with sweet red-orange flesh on compact vines.The fruits have thin, tough rinds that  become almost black when ripe. This heirloom variety was introduced in the 1950's and is widely adapted throughout many parts of the United States. Since this is an heirloom melon, any seeds saved will grow true to the variety.
I have grown many luscious ‘Sugar Baby’ melons. They ripen to such a dark green that the fruit disappears in the shadows. Look carefully. You may have more ‘Sugar Baby’ melons than you think!