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This season I planted 4 cantaloupe plants and 4 watermelon plants and 4 other melon plants that I somehow lost the label of somewhere between the Amish nursery and the trunk of my car. Regardless, the only one who will profit from these 12 plants will be me.
However, I have a very good friend who makes her “pin money” by growing cantaloupe for profit and over the years she has shared a good deal of information with me and I am now going to share it with you.
First off my melon lady says you will need lots and lots of room. I think she plants about an acre of them. Secondly she says you will need to have 6 feet of space between each plant.
My melon lady goes on to say make sure you live in a warm climate as cantaloupes like warm climates and warm seasons. She says they like moist soil. I told her that I can remember one time, so many years ago, that we planted melons and when they were just about ready to harvest we had discovered that the raccoons had put little holes in each melon and dug out the insides to eat leaving us perfect little hollow melons. When I related this story to her she said rodents were also a hazard to growing cantaloupes.
She does not bother with the melon plants but plants her seeds directly into the ground each spring after the last frost. After her soil is tilled and harrowed, she puts down long rows of black plastic, staking down the plastic and creates openings in it every six feet. The black plastic, she says, will absorb the warm sun allowing the soil to warm quickly. In the openings she plants about four to five organic, heirloom melon seeds. My melon lady says this type of “mulching” controls the weed and keeps down the fruit rot.
My melon lady says without the black plastic she would spend a lot of time in her melon patch weeding and weeding and weeding because it is important to keep the weeds down.
She also has a drip hose system that drips right at her seed openings in the black plastic and this allows greater water control with less water waste. If you do not have anything like this she says you will need some sort of overhead watering system as cantaloupes need a lot of water.
When I asked her how she knows when the melons are ripe she says she can tell by the stems which at about 75 days later are starting to dry out.
She keeps her eye out for problems such as cucumber beetles and aphids plus she says never plant melons in the same place two years in a row. She recommends waiting 3 years between planting your melons of any kind in the same area.
Well, she must know what she is doing because she grows great melons and has a very profitable cantaloupe business where people come to her place during the week to buy them and she takes them down to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning and they sure sell fast and they sure are delicious.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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