Two freshly picked golden honeydew melons!
My son Ammon loves to garden! He wants to be a botanist someday, and has loved his botany college classes. More than that, he loves working in the garden, visiting greenhouses, and traveling to places with tropical plants.
I guess I should have guessed. As a boy, we could take him on a most dramatic hike (like the Grand Canyon) and he would be looking down at the ground, studying the plants. That was the most spectacular view to him!
Ammon’s favorite crop to grow is melons, and he grows every exotic variety he can find. His idea of a good time is to visit the seed counter or the local plant nursery. He loves trying every unique plant, cares for them protectively, and saves seeds from past harvests.
At breakfast recently, we were all feasting on a freshly-picked green fleshed cantaloupe. He told us that he had saved the seed from a melon he had eaten in Germany, brought it home, and this was the second summer he had grown it!
Our children come to us with their unique talents and interests. We learn so much from them as we are homeschooling, don’t we? They have enriched my life so much!
Hooray for the Melon Man!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I'd sure love to hear your comment!
Here's Ammon's reply:
I'm by no means an expert at growing melons, but I'll tell you what's worked for me and you can try it out. Melons love the heat and will produce much more fruit if they're kept warmer, and I learned from a gardening class that planting the melons in black plastic works really well. Just get a big sheet of black plastic, and put it on the ground and plant right into it, cutting little "X" mark holes into the plastic to put the seedlings through to the dirt. I have used rocks and boards to secure the black plastic from blowing away. You also have to make sure that it's watered under the plastic, so I use drip hoses and string them along by the plants under the black plastic, then we hook that to our watering system and they're watered automatically so I don't have to mess. The black plastic method has worked really well for me for the past few years and I've had a lot of production from my melon patches.
I know there is some kind of porous plastic that you can water overhead with, use the rain, but I haven't looked into this at all, and I don't know how much warmer it would make it. Out here in Utah it's too dry to do it, but in Ohio it might work well.
Also, for your info the melons I had in the blog were orange-fleshed honeydew.
When a melon is ripe it will start to form a "detachment" looking circle around the stem, and it will come off when you pull on it softly (or hold the melon up by the vine).
Best luck with the melons!
Ammon
I'm not a homeschooler, but I sometimes do "homeschooly" things and we have bought several items from your store in the last year
I just made a post today about two of the things that we recently purchased! Thanks so much!
http://ourfamilywanderings.blogspot.com/2010/09/learning-united-states.html
Oh, that is wonderful! Thank you! We live in Ohio, between Cincinnati and Portsmouth.
Hi!
Ammon is glad to give advice, but he asks where you live. That makes a difference!
;
We love melons, but I have never had much success in growing them! Does Ammon have any tips? We have two on a vine right now… one the size of a tennis ball and one about the size of a large onion… I know they're still too small, but how can you tell when they are ready to pick? Last year they stayed small and I never picked them, and they ended up rotting on the vine before they got very big at all. This year I planted them on a hill, and they seem to be doing better. I have no idea what kind they are, we planted three different melon plants from the nursery, and only one survived… but I don't know which one!
I love how happy he looks. And what bounty!
He might be interested to read Jere's story. He is a man who started his own seed company as a teenager with seeds he had saved and it's grown to be quite successful. You can find the story over at Baker Creek Heirloom seeds @ http://rareseeds.com/about-2/about-us/.
Hi Diane
I thought Ammon might like to know about a particular melon that's a favourite of mine. It's called Moon and Stars melon. We grew them one year and had a 13kg (about 28lbs) one that we shared with the neighbours. It was delicious!