Don't think it would work. Cantaloupes need summer heat to flavor up. Watermelons are less picky, but there isn't all that time for multiple plantings.

Be glad if you are getting good yields. If you only knew the disease troubles possible out there.

Different maturities are of some help...more than one variety.

This evidently doesn't apply to you, but might be stated here for reference. In our very long summer, melons lose steam towards the end. Once they've produced, the plants decline. They know they've done what they needed to do. I see this regularly in canteloupes, honeydews, and Armenian cukes, which are really melons. I plant mine early in the spring, and months before the first frost, after I've gotten a load of fruit, the plants are already fading. So I'm looking at hot September, and very warm October, with no melons. My first frost is December. This next year I will certainly be staggering the planting. First set will go out in March, and the second set around the first of July.

But I agree with Wayne that heat is needed for melons, and if you don't have a lot of it, you'd better use it efficiently.

^^ That's what I was afraid of. I'll have to look more closely at the seed catalogues and see if I can find earlier maturing varieties, even a difference of 15 days would be worth trying.

Even here where we have a long growing season in Va it's just one planting of each. Seeds started indoors around mid April, transplants outside around mid May (if soil temps are warm enough). Cantaloupes are the worst for storing as they will last only 2 weeks even in the fridge so those are mostly givaways, but melons can last for up to 2 months in fridge. By Aug 20th all vines are either dead or exhausted so are pulled up to start the fall crops. Reusing the same plots for fall crops is a real space saver.

^^ When you say melons, do you mean watermelons last up to 2 months? I didn't know that, I'm glad you mentioned it. I found the Crenshaw didn't keep well, but I skipped the cantaloupes in favor of the Crenshaw last year.

I think of the muskmelon/cantaloupe types as bananas, at room temp they last a week maybe, in fridge 2 weeks. Yes, melon was short for watermelon. Their tougher rhine helps them keep much better than the loupe types. There are a couple of tougher skinned loupes that can store longer but not much experience with those. Ambrosia is my loupe of choice.

My watermelons, once picked, are stored outside for about a week under shade, then they're placed in a spare fridge in the garage. Always have 6-8 on ice while the others are in shade or givaways, usually over 2/3rds are givaways. A late picked watermelon in mid Aug can be eaten by late Sept in this manner. Each variety can have different results but my fav (Gold Strike) is hard to beat.

^^ What is the advantage to keeping them outside in the shade vs in the fridge?

Probably little advantage other than the fridge being loaded down with cantaloupes during the same harvest time and there's not much room to spare. But the very first WM goes into the fridge right away for next day eating while the others can rest a spell while awaiting their turn to chill down. The point was that WMs can store ok outside the fridge for much a longer time than cantaloupes.

Have you considered planting different cultivars with differing days to maturity instead? You might find some other growers who want to split seed packets with you, so you can grow several types without spending overly much. I think that they may be good for several years if properly stored somewhere cool and dry. One thing I like about Johnny’s is that they breed and carry varieties that are created for short season areas. It has allowed me to ripen melons in an area with a notably short growing season for cold-sensitive fruits and veggies.

Collective Farm Woman melon was bred to ripen well in cooler weather, so it may work with a later planting. It struggled through the hot and humid summer of my area (zone 7), but I still got a few good melons. White flesh and sweet, almost like the flavor of honeydew but much better than any I've bought at a grocery store.

Well, I placed my seed orders over the weekend and decided to try various cultivars of several types of melon. If that works, I should be well supplied with melons from about early August through September. We'll see.

I would be interested in your results. I haven’t grown more than one type of melons recently, but when I chose carefully with types, it worked well, though I still sometimes had an overabundance. I didn’t grow watermelons, only cantaloupe and honeydew type of melons. It also works with tomatoes, and so I typically grow about a half dozen types and have tomatoes from midJuly until late October. I think you could do the same with peppers if you like them, though when I have tried, only the ones bred for short, cool summers were able to set and ripen fruit, so now I only grow short season peppers.

I have the feeling thatbstaggering works better in longer season areas. I am not sure how long the season is in mxk3’s neck of the woods, but here I have just enough time to ripen short season melons.

^^ I'm not sure if it depends on the weather (day temps and/or night temps) or daylength or both. I've planted out last week of May/first week of June and had melons in August, last year fruit I thought would ripen in September never did, the vines started to decline and that was that; vgkg mentioned the same thing above. Interestingly, the same thing happened with my winter squash - come around late August/early September the vines started to decline, kind of like hey we ripened all this fruit, we're done now. I had one heck of a squash harvest last season! I have enough stashed in the crawl space to last a couple more months. I hope I am blessed again with all that this year. :0)

I made out my seed sowing schedule today, and man I sure do have a lot of varieties of melon LOL! All the way from around 70 days to 100 days. We'll see how all this works out this year.