I remember standing on my back porch, looking across the cornfield that seemed to go on forever. It was so hot that the heat radiated up, distorting the house at the next farm over. Clothes, hung limply on the line. Not a breeze to dry the sweat dribbling down my back. My husband handed me two cantaloupes, heavy and muddy. The smell of the hot melon was so intoxicating it made me dizzy. And like Pavlov’s dogs, I began to salivate.
Growing mouth-watering cantaloupes isn’t difficult, if you follow a few simple rules.
Growing Cantaloupe: Preparing the Soil
Cantaloupe loves the heat. When selecting a site, make sure your melon patch will get a full day’s sun. They aren’t particularly finicky about their soil, but they do best if the pH is 5.5-7.0. Cantaloupe needs loamy soil that is of medium texture to produce the best yield. Cantaloupe should be consistently watered, yet they also need good drainage. Two to three weeks before planting or transplanting, work a large quantity of compost into the top two or three inches of soil.
If you decide that growing cantaloupes in hills will work better for you, make sure your hills are at least 12″ in diameter. After your hills are worked well, remove a couple of shovelfulls of soil, add in one shovel of compost then mix well. Mound the remaining dirt back up on the hill. Your hills should be at least four feet apart.
Last but not least, you can chose my lazy way of growing melons. Pick your location. Throw down an old tire without the rim. Fill the tire with potting soil all the way to the top. I believe in conserving energy, especially my own!
Growing Cantaloupe: Choosing the Seeds
There are dozens of different cantaloupe varieties other than the one or two you’ve seen in the grocery store. Cantaloupes can be early, mid-season or late, depending on when you plant. They can be giant, huge, medium or single serving size. You can get them in colors from very deep salmon to white. You can get hybrids, heirloom or European. You can get the traditional or compact vining cantaloupes, depending on your space limitations. There is even a bush type cantaloupe that can grow in a container!
Growing Cantaloupe: Planting the Seeds
You can get so excited about growing cantaloupes that waiting for the weather to warm can be agony. Starting your seeds inside two to four weeks before planting is a good remedy for the gardening itch. Use either 2″ peat pots (that you’ll plant directly in the soil) or 3″ clay pots, as you don’t want to disturb the root system during transplanting. Starting your seeds inside will allow you an earlier harvest, and you’ll be setting out healthy, established plants which are more immune to some of the pests that can attack your cantaloupe.
If you are starting your seeds inside, plant them ¼”-½” deep.
When the soil has warmed to at least 70 degrees, and all danger of frost has past, it’s time to get out into the garden. If you are planting your seeds in rows, plant the seeds ½”-1″ deep, and 1′-2′ apart. Keep the rows 5′ apart. If you are planting in hills or in tires, plant your seeds ½”-1″ deep, with five or six seeds per hill.
Growing Cantaloupe: Starting Right
Your seeds should germinate in two weeks. Wait until your seedlings have two or three sets of “true” leaves before thinning. If your seedlings are too close together, thin them by snipping with scissors, so you don’t disturb the root systems of its neighbors.
From the time you plant the seeds until the fruit is the size of your fist, growing cantaloupe need plenty of moisture. Consistent watering is imperative for development and production. Drip irrigation works wonderfully with cantaloupe because of their shallow root systems. Keeping water off the foliage and fruit minimizes some of the disease issues, plus it doesn’t interfere with pollination and fertilization.
As the growing cantaloupe seedlings get established, use a common 20-20-20 fertilizer. After you thin your seedlings, mulch around the plants. This not only helps cut down on weeds, but it also helps retain the moisture that is so crucial for the seedlings development. It also helps the soil retain it’s warmth.
Growing Cantaloupe: Bearing Fruit
A cantaloupe plant has both male and female flowers. While the male blossoms appear first, it’s only the female blossoms that bear fruit.
Once your cantaloupes have reached the size of tennis balls, you can slow down on the watering. Only water when the soil is dry and/or the leaves start looking a little wilted.
Check your seed envelope. It will tell you how many cantaloupe you can expect from each vine. Some gardeners recommend removal of all but four or five melons per vine. If this is your first time growing cantaloupe, I recommend experimentation. Leave one vine with eight, another with six and yet another with four.
Growing cantaloupes can be like having a baby. You need to keep the cantaloupe dry and that means off the ground. You can set the growing cantaloupes on pieces of wood or bricks, anything that won’t hold a puddle of water.
Growing Cantaloupe: Reaping What You Sowed
Depending on what type of cantaloupe you’re growing and the weather, it usually takes 80-110 days for your fruit to ripen. Sugar content increases with maturity, however, it does not increase once the cantaloupe is picked. Commercially grown cantaloupe are harvested before they are ripe, which would explain their bland flavor and dismal texture. There’s a good chance that the soft cantaloupe in the store is not ripe, but rotting.
You need to pick the cantaloupe before it releases itself from the vine. At the end of the season, gardeners will remove all underdeveloped melons from the vine and pinch back the growing point, so that all of the vines energy can be directed into finishing the larger melons.
The cantaloupe will start to pull away from the vine when it’s ripe and ready to be picked. It will come off with a slight pull.
Growing Cantaloupe: Know Thy Enemy
Cantaloupes have gotten a bad reputation for being “pest” prone. Keep a diligent eye out for aphids, pickleworm, squash vine bore, spider mites, seed corn maggot and cucumber beetles. There are plenty of solutions to these problems, including making your own “green” insecticide. Here’s a link where you can find some “green” recipes to make your own: http://www.paystolivegreen.com/2008/12/make-your-own-homeade-pesticides-and-repellants/
Diseases that could affect your growing cantaloupe are alternaria leaf spot, powdey mildew, blight and anthracnose. There has been great advancement in the last 20 years in developing disease resistant plants. All that information is on the seed envelope. Starting with healthy soil and healthy plants will minimize your risk.
Growing Cantaloupe: Is it Worth It?
Most cantaloupe seed packets contain 25 seeds and cost about $4. If you are growing your cantaloupe with the hill method, that seed packet will plant approximately 5 hills. After thinning, you should have three viable plants that will produce up to eight cantaloupe each. If you remove all but four cantaloupe per vine, you could expect a dozen cantaloupe from each hill or 60 cantaloupe. 60 beautiful, ripe, heavy, luscious, sweet, delicious, succulent … sorry, just the thought made me dizzy. Cantaloupes average about $2 a piece. Your $4 investment could produce $120 worth of fruit. But forget the money, it’s well worth the effort just because of the superior taste.
So, what does your family do with 60 cantaloupe? Eat it every day for breakfast or chunk it up in a fruit salad. Don’t forget the classic Italian appetizer of prosciutto wrapped around melon. Cantaloupe are high in Vitamins A and C as well as potassium. The rinds can be juiced as well.
You can freeze cantaloupe and pickle it. No matter how you cut it, growing cantaloupe is the most convincing reason for having a garden in the first place. But I must warn you, once you go homegrown, you’ll probably never, ever be happy with store bought cantaloupe again.
