Harvesting too early?

Some varieties are more tasty...like Burpee Early Hybrid Crenshaw, Willhite Sugar Queen, and Goddess.

Supposedly, too much water at ripening is bad...haven't noticed that myself.

I once grew melons in almost pure sand, and they had almost no flavor at all.

i suspected that trace elements has a lot to do with the taste of any fruit and vegetable. Try giving them store bought trace elements next time?

I've had soil tests that are all normal for trace elements. Do you still think that would be helpful?

green-go, Bingo. You got it !1 If and when the plant declines in vigor, the packed in tastiness declines.

drscottr Which trace elements were tested for? There are a lot.

Increasing the good microbes in your soil will likely help. Muskmelons really seem to appreciate basalt rockdust (more than most plants do). Microbes are said to enjoy it. Giving them such as plenty of basalt rockdust (which has plenty of silica, calcium and iron, and lots of trace minerals), with worm castings (which contain microbes), and potassium sulfate should increase the brix and help the fruits to be healthy and strong.

Are your melons well-formed? Do they look nice and keep well for their varieties? Are your nighttime temperatures cooler than they were?

If you fertilized with nitrogen after the fruits got to a certain size, that may have removed the taste. Nitrogen has that effect on fruit, it seems (it seems to happen fast, too, but the taste doesn't seem to come back as fast, although it seems it can come back). Is your soil high in nitrogen? Phosphorus and potassium seem to be fine to use, though. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they help the taste, from my experience.

Some fertilizers may destroy good microbes in your soil, too. Microbes are supposed to help increase the brix. Which fertilizers, soil amendments and/or chemicals do you use, if any? When do you use them?

You might consider using sea minerals, too, both for remineralization and to encourage microbes. You can get those and basalt rockdust (free shipping) from rockdustlocal.com. I haven't tried sea minerals, yet, but I have them on order to use for next year.

I've also heard that too much water can affect the taste, but that's likely due to chlorine killing microbes, the water making nitrogen more available, or something. You can dry farm muskmelons, though (once they really get established), at least in soil like ours with black plastic over it.

agree with Wayne and Green. On the East Coast the high humidity does generate a lot of mildew and other diseases. Diseased zucchini also make tasteless zucchini. I noted in Japan, which has a rainy season in May-June, tomatoes are grown in high tunnels with the sides rolled up. Low tunnels could be OK for melons, with the ends open.

I appreciate all the thoughts.

My soil is wonderful. I use a blend of screened topsoil and yard waste compost in raised beds. I amend every year with 3 - 6" of fresh compost. The soil tests by the Delaware Ag Department show all the usual micronutrients and mocronutrients to be in good supply. I use drip irrigation but turn that off late in the season unless we get a drought. The soil has many earthworms in each hand trowel scoop of earth. I grow on black plastic to reduce weed pressure.

Just always seem to have bland melons.

I've always heard that heat (and light) were the main requirements for melon sugar production with healthy plants. Not overwatering near harvest prevents sugar dilution. If the foliage is healthy, I don't think soil is an issue. I believe that sugar production is shared among fruit, so pruning might be wise. Obviously, harvest at full slip is essential for maximum flavor.

If by pruning, you mean pulling off the last 7 or 8 that set on, that is interesting. I have had 22 set on with finishing power clear to frost. Still, I find melons ,including watermelons, the very, very hardest crop to keep disease free.

Some cantaloupe DO NOT slip.

Yes, in my experience, cantaloupe may not slip late in the season. At that point, you just harvest when the stem dries up, and hope for the best. I don't prune myself, in that my bed is so tangled that it really isn't obvious who is on which vine. But if you have several melons sitting right next to each other, there is a good chance that they share the same vine. They probably won't reach full size if they are sharing a vine close to each other.

drscottr, by your description you could still potentially have too much nitrogen in the soil, if you're going for taste. Fortunately, that's probably the easiest thing to rule out or verify.

Re nitrogen and melons, that's been looked at with some care in the ag community. I think the result is that more nitrogen can mean more fruit yield (with more nitrogen in the fruit!) but the fruit quality and sugar content was unaffected.

More nitrogen is supposed to increase the number of fruits, but not the combined weight of all the fruits.

Look at this article regarding taste. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jpln.200700011/abstract

Something I've read also indicates that nitrates have a worse effect on taste than nitrogen from ammonia. I imagine that might be because soil microbes actually like ammonia, but the same is not necessarily true for nitrates (e.g. calcium nitrate). I don't know if ammonia negatively impacted it at all. I'm curious about urea, though.

Whatever the case, the link I gave indicates nitrogen levels must be excessive (not just moderately high) in order to affect the taste negatively.

In my experience, it seems that foliar sprays of calcium nitrate severely reduced taste for two to four weeks, even though the plants needed nitrogen. I need to experiment more, though. Another form of nitrogen seemed to have a similar effect on tomatoes. Again, these are just suspicions based on limited evidence.

Well, you can look at this, which is specifically about melons, not tomatoes.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsfa.3139/abstract

There are others as well, but this article evaluates "quality parameters", and finds that nitrogen doesn't help. Of course, as we all know, sugar content of melons is less important to market quality than appearance and storage lifetime.

Thanks for the link.