|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 3, 2008 18:23:20 GMT -5
In my melon testing patch, there is one we just tasted along many others and it came first unanimously amongst the group ( small) of 3 testers.It was the last to be tested, up to that moment the taste winner was PASSPORT, from STOKES SEEDS, a multi-disease resistant melon that they claim to be their best tasting. Second was Altaï, not ovewrly sweet but a good tasting melon. But then, we has a taste of a numbered melon from Gatersleben, a dark green beauty with the smallest seed cavity I ever grew. We had GREEN NUTMEG in thepack to campare, and the very clear winner was CUM 271, over all of them. It is such a bad year, so much water and diseases, that one would be sooooo flavourful and so perfect in such conditions and only being a numbered accession, meaning it was never picked and selected for distribution is mindbuggling. The silverlining is I get to name it, and its name for the moment is SARAH, the name of our friend's littlle Oh so beautiful daughter. So it will be grown again and selfed, and since there is sometimes problems with Gatersleben melons, we will see if it comes true to seed or need to be fixed. I intend to ask bell4562 to grow it in Lunéville's castle greenhouses this winter to get more seeds. This is very exciting. anybody who want to step in next year with the melons trials is invited, there is much to be discovered. And you will make lots of very happy neighbours, just like me  |
|
|
|
Post by plantsnobin on Sept 3, 2008 18:32:32 GMT -5
So, you are saying we are all invited to your house next year? Sweet. I just want to say that I appreciate all the info you give us. Seems like you really have your garden together, and you actually do all the things that I say I am going to do when I am ordering seeds. There's always next year....
|
|
|
|
Post by Alan on Sept 3, 2008 19:59:12 GMT -5
Like you said Karen, there is always next year, just hit it hard then!
Great news Mike and I for one look forward to your new introduction. Another great release from the Hip-Gnosis/Homegrown Goodness collective.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 3, 2008 20:24:43 GMT -5
The invitation is there my dear. We are actually building a bigger house just so you can come I move in at the end of the month!! I am very proud of the garden despite the horrible season, once again I was saved by raised beds. It is the first year I really use lots of black plastic, and the practice will become a standard here, for much more than peppers, melons and sweet potatoes. Nest year all the maters and the beans will be on plastic, and if I can, everything else that I start indoors. I am 50, not getting youger, and if I want to expand the garden every year I need help and to plan a lot more. This year, I have achieved most of my goals, but at the expense of my revenues, working on pure commissions...lucky my wife was there and we are not much of the money hungry type... But this melon thing is really getting my juices flowing. There is much more to be done and discovered with that crop. The asian have melons with remarquable disease resistence, and I intend to have fun with them. Here are some pictures of the melons gathred today. I have much more comming...and the Lunéville to taste... CUM 271 / SARAH   PASSPORT, touted by STOKES as very disease resistant and their best tasting melon ( note the larger seed cavity):   Altaï, our third one today, a true cantaloupe originally from Russia grown in the prairies  Minnessota midget, ranked fourth because of lots of muskyness, I liked it better than Altaï personnaly:  Green Nutmeg just tasted like sweet water  Frieland Mitscherino, from Germany was good, ok good:   I also harvest GOLDEN MIDGET watermelons, real cute one/two person melons, very small but nu merous:  And here is the picture of tomorrow morning's breakfeast, a beautiful ABSINTHE tomato... I'll have melons after the sandwich ;D and probably for the next few weeks   |
|
|
|
Post by Alan on Sept 3, 2008 20:55:07 GMT -5
So you didn't like the green nutmeg? So far out of my green muskmelon mix that and Jenny Lend are my favorites, I absolutely love them and they make a great breakfast at the farmers market! Glad to see the Absinthe tomatoes are doing well.
Speaking of Absinthe there are now once again legal ones in the U.S. though they aren't of high quality and are friggin' expensive.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 3, 2008 22:32:48 GMT -5
You have to understand it has been a terrible year for melons. The first ones I got paid the price for the lack of sun. The job of the plant is to produce seeds and they did it without any sun for 2 months, so it is only fitting that diseased plant, once sun comes AT LAST, can hardly manufacture the sugars needed. A melon that does it can only be very good, better at it than others.
The simple fact I have fruits is testimony enough for me of how good fighters the plants have been. Maybe the next green nutmeg will be better, having had more time in the sun. We are having our July now, I even have to water. But these melons were at their size without sun. There is only so much one can ask to them
Both Green Nutmeg and Jenny Lind are favorites of mine. I did not plant Jenny Lind because this is the one I know the most out of any melon and I wanted to explore. I put some Green Nutmeg to make sure I was going to satisfy my taste for the green ones, not knowing what to expect from the others.
I did not even know CUM 271 was green fleshed, IPK has no descriptors.
This is the hell of a surprise to me, and I will sure make it a part of my garden from now on. Honestly, it beats them at the finish, not so much for the taste, all 3 are ambrosia to me, but for the amount and the thickness of the flesh, and hey, for having manufactured so much sugar in such testing times. My Green Nutmeg flesh is almost white, Sarah is dark green.
Th edownside is there is much less seed to share, the seed cavity is too small...
I am in my garage now, and the smell of all these meons is pure heaven, like I was in a perfume store....
|
|
|
|
Post by Alan on Sept 9, 2008 21:38:38 GMT -5
I love the Jenny Lind as well. I really prefer the green fleshed muskmelons over the orange and can't even imagine and orange one to compare. I look forward to the CUM 271/Sara and growing it in the near future. This is the first year that I have ever really done well with growing melons and now that I think I have a good method figured out you can bet I'll be growing a lot more in the years to come. If only it were spring 2009.
|
|
|
|
Post by grungy on Sept 9, 2008 22:15:36 GMT -5
Mike, those pictures are pure torture. They look so lovely and I'm just too far away to taste any of them. Great growing, mon ami.
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 9, 2008 22:22:25 GMT -5
Alan, I have kept seeds of all the good melons. They are a mass-cross, really, as I could not get in the patch to self or cross ( except for one Lunéville). Again, I did it in my second smaller patch and everything died in a mather of days, or got vey diseased. I got 3 melons out of 12 plants, and surely not the biggest, except for one COLLECTIVE FARM WOMAN thay I will taste later, tomorrow maybe. So if you feel like having fun, I can send you seeds of all the green mothers... There is another one that is giving me 3 HUGE melons of the winter type, CONSUL SCHILLER, from Gatersleben. They don't sem ready yet. But here is a picture of STREIT FRIELAND GUGENETZ, a green one sent to me by our flemmish friend Frank Van Keirsbilck ( Orflo). The taste is very very good, rich, complex,I had some 20 minutes ago and it is still in my mouth. I only got 2 small ones, but they beat the crap out of GREEN NUTMEG, I picked some of them today, they have had more sun than the first ones to make sugars, but the taste is the same bland nothing. I threw them in the compost pile.  On the watermelon front, up to yesterday Alan's mass-cross of whites was the clear taste winner , but it got beaten today by EARLY CANADA, a really, really really sweet treat. I could not take pictures, it got killed by my friend's family with passion and lots of Oh! and Ha!! I managed to have some seeds saved, but I would rather buy new ones for this baby. Up to now, funnily, BLACKTAIL MOUNTAIN has not given me a ripe one yet! I was counting on him for a race with the whites, but there was never one. Golden Midget, apart from its yellow gene, is not doing better even with the sun of the 2 last weeks. Breeding material it is, not more, to me anyway...not here in such a weather for sure. I was counting on a good bout of diarreah to have a pretext to stop tasting melons, one can only eat so much before dreaming of onions and garlic but apparently the rascals are full of fibers, like flavored Metamucil We'll leave it at that |
|
|
|
Post by orflo on Sept 9, 2008 23:57:46 GMT -5
That's how things get another name: it's streits freiland grungenetzt... ;D ;D ;D ;D
Samen Streit was an old German seed firm (samen=german for seeds), freiland is just outside, 'free land' and grungenetzt is also quite evident, green-netted. It's unavailable commercially, but it's just about the best tasting melon I ever had...but my production is better than yours, Michel, even in this dreadful year I have 5-7 melons each plant (greenhouse grown, off course, no other way to get ripe melons over here (with the exception of minnesota midget and de Bellegarde))
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 10, 2008 0:47:24 GMT -5
OK!! OK!! But if you, germans and flemmishes, could only stop writing in chinese, we would understand better Grungenetzt might be evident for you my dear flemmish cowboy, but it means NOTHING TO ME   But I'll admit ''grunge'' sounds about like ''green'' if I was farting it instead of saying it! So it must be german then, which is exactly what I said, it is chinese!  So, STREITS FREILAND GRUNGENETZT it is my friend, and despite the complex chinese terminology, it is simply DELICIOUS and I owe you a big one. Seeds of Sarah will go your way next time we do something together, probably with the roots of asarum Canadense. |
|
|
|
Post by biorag on Sept 10, 2008 3:32:00 GMT -5
Passport seems to be very interesting for the "Morvan" climate ! ;D Michel, the pictures I posted concerning my melons (Lunéville topic)would be better here, no ?! |
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 10, 2008 11:12:01 GMT -5
;D I posted pics in both, sorry for the lack of discipline!
Bof! Maybe we should go back to the other one....I just wanted to thank Orflo for his fantastic melon so I created a special post...
|
|
|
|
Post by Alan on Sept 18, 2008 21:48:04 GMT -5
Either way you guys have me begging for seeds again!
|
|
|
|
Post by canadamike on Sept 18, 2008 23:07:15 GMT -5
Got another good one green for you Alan, I had a great HA'OGEN, from Israel. It got raped by my son's friends, including with porto, before I could take pictures. It's well known anyway, you can look up the pictures on the net.
Appearence wise, there are a certain numbers of melons that are not a class per se but are small and have a common classy refined look: Charentais, Ha'ogen ( Ogen ), Petit Gris de Rennes, Ananas d'Amérique à Chair Verte are in a visual class of their own. I'll maybe end up finding another one or more looking like that in the bunch I have, I would love it. Please, people, step in if another one like that comes to mind.
|
|
