Cantaloupes 2011

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Documenting the cantaloupes harvested for my breeding program:

September 3rd 2011. First fruit. No photo. West field.

September 6th 2011. The large one is a volunteer. North field.


September 9th 2011. West field.


September 9th 2011. North field.


September 10th 2011. North field


September 12th 2011. North field


September 13th 2011. All fields.


That makes 39 muskmelons so far for the year. I may save a couple other cantaloupes with specialty traits such as the bush cantaloupe, or the largest fruit, or some unusual shape, but I am mostly done collecting seed for the year. Anything else that is harvested can go into the CSA baskets.

[spacecase0]

they all look so very good,
that is going to be lots of seeds
I sure am wondering what that bush one will do next year

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Yesterday (September 21st) was a great day to be a cantaloupe breeder.
That is more ripe cantaloupes in one day than I harvested in the last two
growing seasons put together!!!! And I harvested another basket that
didn't make it into the photo due to growing in a different field.



I'm being persnickety though.... As I'm collecting seeds I'm throwing away anything from a melon that doesn't taste great to me. I wasn't expecting to be able to select for taste until next year. But they have come on so abundantly that I can't help myself. Actually I saved one yucky tasting melon. It was the second melon to ripen, and it grew from a volunteer seed. I figure that if it can sit in the ground all winter and still sprout, that it's descendants might be suitable for planting a few weeks before our last spring frost... Oh no!!!! I can see it coming already: I'll be planting 10,000 cantaloupe seeds looking for a frost-tolerant, or cold-hardy melon.

[grunt]

And you'll find it!!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Harvested another bushel of cantaloupes yesterday (September 23rd):



And a few that are unusual enough to go into the diversity gene pool: The largest (6.1#), the tiniest (0.4#), a smooth skinned fruit, a fuzzy fruit, a fruit from a volunteer, and a fruit of a type that an eater said was very tasty.

[12540dumont]

Joseph! You are doing great. I can't wait for the melon that overwinters!

[mnjrutherford]

Those melons are simply gorgeous! An overwintering melon huh? hmmmm.... well, for what it's worth... a few years back we had a pumpkin vine that died and left behind a few fruit that we left on the ground so that it would return to the soil. They stayed there, in perfect condition till the beginning of Spring when they sort of "melted" into the soil leaving seed scattered around. Those seeds then began to sprout up gangbusters. We got sprouts from them for a couple of years at least. So, over wintering isn't a total stretch of the imagination. Maybe if you put them into a soil bank?

[wildseed57]

Boy I would be in melon heaven, if I just had half of those, sadly all my melon plants except one died, the survivor was Voatango which I had plan to breed with as it had disease resistance and other good qualities, but the melons it produced were sour and had a bland cucumber like taste to them even when very ripe. It did put out 7 very nice melons with good size to them. I decided to pull up the vines when I cleaned up the raised bed where I had planted all my melons. I think next year I will not plant any melons unless I can find one that will not die from Mildew, gummy stem and melon blight. The high humidity was a killer this year and every thing came down with mildew, I lost all my melon, squash, and cucumbers and what peas I had left from spring, which may have been the first to come down with mildew. What didn't die from disease were quickly eaten by vine borers and japanese beetles.
George W.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I harvested another 1.5 bushels today, September 26th, but I didn't take a photo:

I don't have a very sensitive nose, so I think people are funny when they smell every cantaloupe on the table before choosing one to take home. But today, I was driving a car instead of a truck, and I picked the cantaloupes in the hottest part of the day, and then put them in the passenger compartment with me. Oh my gosh! I could sure smell the cantaloupes today. Wow!!!

[mnjrutherford]

They have a very sweet perfume don't they? It's unfortunate that their fragrance has never been "captured" for use in fragrance industry.

[cortona]

mmmmm i think a part of channel n 5 is cantalupe fragrance.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Cantaloupe harvest for September 28th. Ha! I am having so much fun with cantaloupes this year. Oh my gosh!!! I am thrilled, thrilled! THRILLED!!!



And all spread out:



p..s. That little golden one was bland, bland!, BLAND!!!

[canadamike]

Joseph:

I know I promised you radishes seeds and a few other things once my moving would settle, but it has been a terrible year here for agriculture and I have to spend a lot of time all around Quebec and sometimes Ontario dealing with problems in my job. THe huge floods the province was victim of is taking a toll on my daily business...I am writing to you tonight from 300 ,iles away from home and will be home tomorrow for one day, then leave for a 12v hours drive..it's been like that all summer.

It is quite exciting though, as a lot of the old corn or tomato genetics we gave or sold to farmers are performing remarquably well..

I DO have cold tolerance genetics to offer. LUNÉVILLE, WHICH WAS DISCUSSED HERE IN 2008 is amazing for that, his father PRESCOTT too, albeit much less productive, both are as tasty as a dream melon, Lunéville has the flaw of being overwellmingly robust, so if it rains in the ripening period, the bastard will keep on growing like hell, diluting the sugars, but it is a situation that is related to most melons, Lunéville is simply so robust it worsens the situation. But I do not think flooding rains are your problem like here

Another one, VOATANGO, sold by the french SSE equivalent KOKOPELLI, is tasteless, but impervious to powdery mildew to the point where ONE PLANT gave me 8 melons in the 6-8 pounds category or so. It also was more cold resistant than Lunéville, which was a first to me, and even had a flower after a frost. Mind you, the vine did not look as sexy as Catherine Zeta-Jones, but it was alive with one flower...

Beware of the name VOATANGO though...in local Madagascar language it only means melon, and a french breeder with whom I correspond has a few other VOATANGO lines, and they seem to be resistant to diseases too. They are , although looking more like elongated sweet melons, more related to asian cooking melons, more a veggie than a fruit.

They seem to me to be this perfect in between that can be used in crosses...

Lunéville, by the way, which was discussed here years ago, is now distributed by Baker Creek, which is amazingly good news for this stallion of a melon. Hurray for HG

[ottawagardener]

Nice Cataloupes Jopseph. If you are ever trading seeds...

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I am always trading seeds, and/or gifting seeds..... Send me an email or PM.

There are plenty of seeds to share from all of my breeding projects (except for the red podded peas). Today I have something like 10,000 cantaloupe seeds sitting on the floor of my bedroom dehydrating, which is approximately 9,900 more than I need! They are still in the same bottles I used for fermenting them in, one bottle per fruit, and I've actually labeled them so if you see anything in a photo from a previous post that you really want, let me know. Some fruits were nasty so I tossed them, and some labels went bye-bye, but they are more or less labeled. I set them in front of a big fan. So far these are only for the "Best" gene pool. Next week I'll start fermenting cantaloupes for the diversity gene pool.

I remember a flooding thunderstorm something like 40 years ago, but the water was gone in an hour.