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Gary350
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Best Cantaloupe crop ever.

The soil at the new house is pretty bad but the cantaloupes don't seem to care. Temperature has been from 95 to 105 for about 8 weeks and not much rain but the cantaloupes don't seem to care. We have eaten 6 or 7 cantaloupes already and they are the best I have ever grown. There are 18 cantaloupes on the vine size range from 4" to 7" and one is ready to pick. The cantaloupe patch is only about 5'x12'.

Water melons are just starting to make melons there are 11 on the vine and still pretty small but that is good because the cooler weather and rainy season is coming at the right time to make large melons.

Honey Dew melons are starting to make melons too there are 9 melons on the vine.

The soil here has no organic material it dries out hard as cement. I planted the melons the first week of June. I dug a hole and put a whole bag is child play sand in each hole with 6 seeds. No fertilizer, no organic material either. I have not been watering the plants either. I got all my seeds from grocery store melons last year. LOL free seeds.

[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/mikeweaver/100_1615.jpg[/img]

gumbo2176
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Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

Man, don't you just love when things work out that well. Nice crop of "lopes" you have there. I was just telling my wife the other night that when I was a kid, my mom would take a small cantaloupe, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and fill the cavity with chocolate ice cream. I'd eat half a cantaloupe that way and loved every bite. If I did that now, I'd have indigestion for a couple days. Enjoy your crop.

nathan125
Full Member
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:36 am
Location: idaho

Any idea what type of melons you have there?
mine are starting to get some size, but it's not great. I tried a different method of trellising, I stacked a cattle panel on it's side like a table top, I thought easier harvesting, didn't think of harvesting the now hard to get to bottom of the plant, big crowing issue. next year I'll do it better. :(

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lakngulf
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Joined: Mon May 10, 2010 4:34 pm
Location: Lake Martin, AL

Good job with the cantaloupes. A good sweet 'loupe is hard to beat, except maybe with a good sweet honeydew. Did all seed come from store bought fruit?

If I had a large enough spot with sun I might try some cantaloupe but I always thought it was too hot down this way for honey dew, but I may be wrong.

Enjoy the fruit of our efforts



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