Thanks Dawn! I'm glad to see that the varieties I had narrowed it down to are on the list! I decided to grow Moon and Stars, Blacktail Mountain, and Desert King, as well as Noir des Carmes and Charentais (available this year from Nichols' Seeds for $.35!). I can hardly wait!

Ada

Ada,

You're welcome. I've grown all the ones you listed and have liked them all. My dad grew Moon and Stars decades ago and it was always his favorite.

One thing about Moon and Stars that I didn't remember when I grew it as an adult was that the foliage is speckled with moons and stars in the same way the melons are. So, I showed my plant to my dad and said "why does the foliage look like that?" and he laughed as he told me it was supposed to "look like that". It is funny that when I was a kid, I never noticed the moons and stars on the foliage, because I sure did notice them on the melons. LOL

To this day, people who see it growing in the garden tell me it is "sick" because of the yellow speckles and splotches and I have to explain that those ARE the moon and stars. : )

Have fun growing them. Nothing tastes better than a ripe melon right from the garden, unless it is a ripe home-grown melon, freshly chilled, from the garden/refrigerator.

Dawn

LOL! I'm glad you said something since I would probably have thought there was something wrong with it too!! This will be my first melon year and I'm so excited, though I think my Dad is even more excited. He's from Southern Cal in the desert and can remember picking wild pomegranates, etc., all far larger than I have ever seen them, so he's really looking forward to some more "exotic" summer eating than what we are used to from the grocery store in Oregon, LOL!

By the way, how much space do you usually allow per plant?

;-) Ada

Ada,

It depends on the plant. I have to be honest and tell you I never follow the proper spacing rules and pack plants tightly together in the biointensive style.

With small refrigerator melons (the small 3 or 4 to 8 to 12 lb ones), I plant them 3' feet apart for one ones like Bush Sugar Baby and 6' apart for the ones like Blacktail Mountain and Yellow Doll. For full-sized ones like Moon and Stars, I plant them about 8' apart. In a perfect world, they'd be planted 12' apart, but I don't space them that widely. All my melons are grown in raised beds, raised 4" to 6" above the existing grade, and most of those beds are 4' to 5' wide. The melons tend to grow down into the pathways (which are only 18" wide) and up into the next bed. When I say that my veggie garden is a wild jungle by mid-summer, it really is.....and it is all my fault for planting things "too closely" together. On the other hand, when every square inch is covered in something I planted, and it is well-mulched, there's no bare or unused soil in which weeds will sprout.

Dawn

Dawn,

Mom and I were lamenting the loss of some of our perennials because they were suffocated last summer from planting annuals (particularly profusion zinnias and heliotrope) too close together, LOL! We ALWAYS plant "too close!" This year we're "solving" it by planting some beds mostly in perennials with a few not-so-aggressive annuals, and other beds mostly in annuals...that way we can have the lush look without the expense of loosing too many perennials - at least the bugs didn't get us, LOL!

We're still working out our bed layout. There's been virtually no landscaping on the property since the house was built in 1925, so we're starting from scratch. Last Spring we put in all we could manage - two extra-deep beds of flowers (roses, annuals, perennials) and a few herbs and some pots in various places. We're planning on expanding considerably this year (which is why I'm asking so many questions)! At the same time, we're trying to finish up our house restoration...we're building our new kitchen right now and have lots of trim and two bathrooms to go...and I'm trying to finish up grad school. Thank God for gardening is all I can say!