You need better advice! Permethrin is the active ingredient in Bonide's "Eight" insecticide, listed for use on curcubits.
It's widely available.

What critter are you having problems with on your melon crops?

I'm planning to grow Charentais melons again and plan on using permethrin as an insecticide. My first attempt ended in total failure when I sprayed nothing until the vines started dying from disease spread by the thousands of squash bugs happily residing among my 30+ plants. I was going to sell them at our newly opened farmer's market but instead composted over a hundred unripe, diseased, crappy melon-like orbs of disappointment.

Southern Agricultural Insecticides offers a good deal on the stuff and I get mine at our local county co-op. I've also seen it at the Ace hardware, and maybe Home Depot but I'm not sure. Look for white plastic containers with yellow label with some green on it.

An alternative to spraying is to surround the plot with electronet fencing and put two guinea hens in there. They will search and destroy diligently. Not for me this year, but maybe in the future...

Thanks so much!! I actually just got six guinea keets yesterday -- will make the best use of them I can as they grow.

Will call the co-op about the permethrin. I did find a printout of the original post and it says to spray until the blossoms appear then stop (to protect bees). He said it deterred diseases and vine borers.

The main culprits last year were cucumber beetles (which spread disease) and squash bugs. I was picking dozens of each off every day. Hope this year goes much better. I am even planting non-pollinating cukes and plan to cover them with insect barrier and see how that goes.

Don't know about cuc beetles but I believe the SVBs overwinter in the soil so floating rowcovers maybe won't work, by all means try it, I sure don't know everything. For the first time in many years I grew squash and the poor plants were hammered by SVBs by the time I noticed, ripped them out and off to the dump, durned SVBs.

Sevin might be effective on SVBs, Neem oil may be too but you may have to get it on them to be effective.

The Charentais I tried twice did fine from a disease and insect standpoint; however, they have a very strong tendency to split at the stem end of the fruit causing rot to begin very soon afterward. At first I thought it was a water relations issue, some fruit can split if allowed to get to get too dry then are irrigated (think tomatoes) but my melons most certainly didn't have that problem the second year and split just as bad as the first, chauld it up to poor breeding for my locale, yours may be better.

I think splitting is a problem with charentais generally. They'll split when the other melons in the patch are having no problem.

I'm trying out different varieties to try to find one less inclined to split.