North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

If you are having trouble with melons, I'll assume it's because you live 
too far north. So do I. Human nature being what it is, we still want to 
grow melons.
Many years ago, I read an article (I'm pretty sure it was in Pomona) 
about melon varieties for the north. The best muskmelon, according to 
the author, was a variety sold by Harris Seed called Early Dawn. I 
believe they have recently dropped that variety from their catalog. Over 
several years, I grew one or two other promising varieties along side 
Early Dawn but never found one that worked better.
I came up with a method that gave me good melons every year, though 
muskmelons always did better than watermelons. Sugar Baby watermelons 
did pretty well though. My method was to dig a long trench, usually down 
the center of the garden. The trench was only about 18 inches deep and 
18 inches wide, maybe less. I would then drive my truck across town 
where there were a few horses. They often warned me that it should be 
composted before use in the garden but I would explain that I wanted it 
for the heat and the fresher the better. I would fill my trench to the 
top with the horse manure. Then I would take the soil that came out of 
the trench and throw that back on top. I would rake it smooth creating a 
rounded ridge with the horse manure hidden inside.
I would then take a sheet of black plastic and cover the whole ridge. 
Transplants would be planted through slits in the black plastic right 
down the center of the ridge. I would then take gallon milk jugs filled 
with water and place one right next to each plant. Last of all, I 
covered the whole planting with a floating row cover. Those milk jugs 
placed next to each plant not only moderated the temperature a little 
but kept the small plants from being crushed by the row cover in a 
pounding rain. My favorite was one called VisPore because it was soft, 
stretchy and held more heat than others. A quick search of the VisPore 
name came up with a different product used as a ground cover to prevent 
weeds. There are other floating row covers to choose from if the VisPore 
is no longer available. As soon as I could see several flowers on the 
melon plants, I would remove the floating row cover to let the bees do 
their work. I generally put the floating row cover away for the season 
at that point.
This was a lot of work but the difference was like day and night. A soil 
thermometer stuck through the black plastic into the top of the ridge 
would read in the 90s compared to the 60s in normal soil a few feet 
away. In my climate, melons grown like other garden plants would form 
only a few small tasteless melons. With the above technique, the plants 
would be easily 5 times bigger and we would get dozens of big flavorful 
melons. One thing I alway noticed though is that it was like someone 
turned off a switch on September 1st. Melons harvested in August were 
sweet and good. After September 1st any remaining melons were quickly 
loosing sweetness and soon were not worth eating.

Steve - In the Adirondacks of northern NY


Deb S wrote:
> Once again I am going to attempt to grow melons this year.  I plan to 
> make individual raised beds (I have a lot of black plastic culvert 
> sections lying around) for each melon hill.  With this method, I can 
> pretty much create the soil environment I want (mix in 
> compost/sand/potting soil or whatever).  I also will cover the top 
> with black plastic and start the seeds in jiffy pots in the house.
>
> I'm hoping MAYBE this will yield me a few melons!  I have a watermelon 
> variety (Moon and Stars) and a muskmelon variety (Collective Farm 
> Woman). 
>
> Any tips on melon growing would be most welcome.  Also, what are your 
> favorite melon varieties?
>
> deb