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Post by Penny on Sept 25, 2010 6:32:53 GMT -5
Well done, Michel......those are look great, and yep.....drooling here too!
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Post by galina on Sept 26, 2010 18:55:56 GMT -5
Thank you for showing us. They look just so good. Hard, crispy, banana flavoured melons? I had no idea such things existed.
Drooling here too .....
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Post by canadamike on Oct 4, 2010 23:36:23 GMT -5
Here are a few other pictures: DVASH HAOGEN: pretty close to Haogen but darker and greener colored, as opposed to the yellowish Haogen. This class of small true cantaloupe melons, Charentais like, is really interesting and get much better prices here, 5$ instead of 2-3$ in many fruitstands. ODEN, simply bigger than Dvash Haogen, but otherwise similar, but too big for the ''charentais like'' class of small melons, although not really a big one, smaller than our standard grocery store musmelon. DVASH HAOGEN and ODEN, a view of their flesh: EDEN AND HERO OF LOCKINGE: THAT WILL BE ALL FOR THIS YEAR'S PICTURES, FOLKS!! HOPE YOU ENJOYED THEM!! I grew way more cultivars than those showed here, but when you get them from genebanks, it does not mean they are good for your climate...usually, most are duds. But NEVER all of them. I am blessed with enough room and...passion to grow hundreds of them, so I am lucky to end up with a variety of good melons. But to be frank, I am happy that the freezer could take a lot of them, my taste buds are melonned out for a while See you in a month or so in smoothies, my frozen friends!!
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Post by jack66 on Oct 5, 2010 15:51:53 GMT -5
You must be a happy man Michel with your splendid melons.Many, many thanks to have shown us these photographs.
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Post by toad on Oct 7, 2010 13:34:25 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing pictures and experience. I had a short season with few melons, but since I select for hardinesss and earliness, this was a perfect season for making progress, weather made selection for me. I shall have no difficult choices next spring between too many seed envelopes :-)
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Post by canadamike on Oct 9, 2010 22:46:58 GMT -5
I think we should help each other Toad...All my seeds are yours of course. Of special importance to me in the future, because of this year's work is VOATANGO. i sure cannot prove it can achieve such good taste as LUNÉVILLE, my former thoughest melon around, as one plant ONE SINGLE PLANT reacted to both the historical heat wave and the following torrential records rains by producing 8 VERY HUGE MELONS. I am sorry for my last statement about it. I said it gave me 5 huge melons. It was false. 2 weeks later I found 3 other ones hidden beneath lush foliage, and we are talking third week of September in Ontario, a time where everything else in the melon world is long dead. No frost yet but darn cold nights, around 6-8 Celsius or in the 40's F for our american friends. So that melon: -Was said by Kokopelli that it could endure extreme heat: we had the hottest summer in my life, I am 52. We had our hottest summer ever, a hot sub-tropical climate for over a month in July ( then in August at the end of the month) with tempreature over 45 C ( around 115 F in the shadow), all that in an extremely moist climate, which makes it tougher. Even LUNÉVILLE did produce 3 melons but died of powdery mildew like a lot of the others, especially the more northern melons like PETIT GRIS DE RENNES. I only treated once with sodium bicarbonate. -Can outproduce anything I have seen in my life by a measure that is almost GMO like. Over 20 ( 45 pounds) kilos of melons one ONLY ONE VINE ( not the usual 3 plants on a hill) in such a season ( it was hot but still a short season) shows it can take on almost any indecent water amount provided and transform it in plant material probably as long as nitrogen is plentiful like in the case of corn. -Can also resist COLD, as it was pumping out flowers when all the other were dead. -It has a creamy, NOT WATERY flesh even in excess water, and it is also true in the over-ripe stage, when it bursts. NO WATERY FLESH. Kokopelli tastes and backs up what it sells. I believe in the taste of these people, even more since I met most of them. Find me one bad cultivar... All these things make me thing VOATANGO is one of the most desirable melons I could include in a cross for us northern gardeners, including disease and cold resistance, notwithstanding relative earliness, and is probably one of the ideal melons for my southern friends, AT THE VERY LEAST FOR CROSSING. I can't vouch for its flavor, but for to say it had an unsweetened melony taste, but given the fact it is a melon coming for a HOT DRY SUBTROPICAL country ( compare it to here) AND THAT MELONS NEED AROUND 25 LEAVES PER FRUIT FOR SUGAR AND FLAVOR, it is remarquable it not only survived but thrived to that incredible level vegetatively. And, if I might just use my intuition here, given I have grown more than a few...I have that feeling it would taste great in a normal setting, non record wet summer. I WILL GROW IT NEXT YEAR, AND WILL CURTAIL ITS PRODUCTION TO 2 MELONS PER VINE. 10 POUNDS of melons per vine is not a nightmare anyway
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Post by jack66 on Oct 10, 2010 2:35:16 GMT -5
* AND THAT MELONS NEED AROUND 25 LEAVES PER FRUIT FOR SUGAR AND FLAVOR, ( tilt!!! ) * 3 melons but died of powdery mildew ( Michel can you say more on this disease, please ! ) Thanks
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Post by canadamike on Oct 11, 2010 2:05:22 GMT -5
Powdery mildew is one name for many different diseases. It is the easiest disease to recognise: the leaves ans stems are covered by a white powdery looking fungus as the name implies.
It is a closely related ''family of diseases' that are plant family ( genuses) specific'. It rarely kills plants but can affect food production since once leaves are covered, photosynthesis is disturbed.
It touches almost anything. It is a family of fungus that becomes a plague when it is warm and humid. Rain is too ''wet'' for it. Lilacs and phloxes are often the first to get it. Here, in my area, I always look at phloxes, they are the first to get it. The fungus on my phloxes won't touch my cukes, but will be a useful ''weather'' indicator and tell me it is time to act and prevent.
I have often used SODIUM BICARBONATE against it with success, to the rate of one teaspoon per litre of water. Do not use more SB. 3 years ago, I had a sudden bout of it in my melon patch and it looked bad. SB did nothing, I suspect it is because the disease had taken too strong a foothold, so I used a sulfur based foliar solution at a 50% dilution, and it worked. It is usually advised NOT to use sulfur on cucurbits, but it did work for me that year.
Sulfur is pretty safe on almost anything else though. Once, my wife was complaining about her paeonies being too infected. I told her to come back in 15 minutes. I prepared a bottle of sulfur solution, sprayed and VOILÀ, the paeonies looked brand knew and almost waxed in a matter of seconds.
I always considered Powdery Mildew as one of the easiest diseases to get rid of. Apparently, cornmeal in the ground is an excellent way to kill the disease, which ''sleeps'' in the ground before hurting the plants.
But I never tried it. Just Google it, it will pop up.
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Post by wildseed57 on Nov 24, 2010 22:18:16 GMT -5
Hi Mike I've tried to reach you at your email, but so far no luck, so I assuming that your really busy. The Voatango sounds very interesting to think that it is hardier than the Lune Ville makes me think that it would indeed be very useful in crossing. I wonder what we would get if we did a Voatango X LuneVille ? Pm hits here in Missouri every year some years it wipes out everything in the garden at times. So for me a melon that could with stand it would be great. Just as it would be great to have a tomato that was resistant to Late and Early Blight. I was wondering about the Banana type melon that you grew as you didn't comment on it I was wondering just how big it got as it looked fairly large? If you have a few seeds of Voatango I would be interested in obtaining some. You can either reach me here, or contact me at my yahoo mail address. I have been trying to contact Tom Wagner and Darth Slater but I have not heard back yet from them either. Please let me know about the seeds when you have time. George W.
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Post by canadamike on Nov 25, 2010 0:11:31 GMT -5
Sorry my friend, I got nothing on my e-mail from you. My e-mail is : jeanmlachaume@hotmail.com. I have lots of seeds to share, but understand they are all OP, which means they might have crossed. I was away from the garden at flowering time. The Voatango x Lunéville is a dream for many of us I think I would also cross it like crazy with oriental crunchy melons like SAKATA'S SWEET, SILVER LINING and all... Voatango NEEDS BADLY TO BE KEPT IN CHECK IN HUMID REGIONS LIKE HERE. Water will make it produce totally indecent amount of flavourless flesh. It is, if we work with it, both a blessing and a curse, depending on how we do it. PM me your adress, I will get in mailing mode within a month or so...
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Post by toad on Nov 29, 2010 15:16:02 GMT -5
Thanks for your advise, just ordered Voatango and Lunéville from Kokopelli in France. Hopefully next summer will be just as cold and wet, to put them on trial ;-)
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