Melon characteristics - input please!

I'm sorry - I know I'm a little slow on the uptake here (considering we have nearly 800 melons in PlantFiles now...) But, better late than never, right? When detailing melons, we currently have the general plant characteristics:

Category
Height
Spacing
Sun Exposure
Bloom Color
Days to Maturity
Other Details
Soil pH Requirements
Propagation Methods
Seed Collecting

And most of those are probably fine as-is. But it occurred to me (albeit late in the game), that we should probably have a few more melon-specific details (keep in mind, these will be applied to all Citrullus/watermelons, plus Cucumis melo/musk melons, cantaloupes, etc.)


I need your feedback on these (or other characteristics) that are important to describing melons.

Flesh Color
Dark red
Light red
Yellow
Orange
Cream
Green

Skin Color and Appearance
Dark
Light
Mottled
Striped
Lightly Netted
Heavily Netted


Size & Shape (I suspect these may need to be different for each group; watermelons seem to break down as follows):

Icebox (round 8-12 pounds)
Crimson Sweet (round 15-20 pounds)
Jubilee (elongated 18-25 pounds)
Allsweet (elongated 18-25 pounds)

Assuming we break out Cantaloupes and other melons separately, what are good size ranges for them?


Seed Type
Open Pollinated
Heirloom
Hybrid

Do we need to specify seeded vs. seedless? If so, how should it be titled?

Any other characteristics I've missed? Please speak up and let your voice be heard. I'd like to get these added ASAP, but I want to give everyone a chance to weigh in first. Let's plan on finalizing the characteristics by next Friday, Feb. 3rd, if possible. Thanks in advance!!!!

Seed catalogs define watermelons as diploid [seeded] and triploid [seedless]. ...so that is important.

Catalogs are insistant on naming the size and color of seeds for watermelons.

Watermelon flesh colors also include pink, peach, and gold and are distinct from the ones already mentioned.

Cantaloupes are listed as eastern types [sutured or ribbed] and western types [unsutured ].... plus Mediterranean types.

Most of the hundreds of melon listings are rather obscure to everyone nearly but that may be ok as you can wade through them by both popularity and alphabetically.

This is an awfully broad topic, but lets try watermelons first.

Size is impotant when choosing, so I would suggest the following categories which are currently used in marketing.
Personal - 2- 8 lbs
Icebox - 8 -18 lbs
Picnic - 18 - 30 lbs
Traditional large - 30- 50 lbs
Show - over 50 lbs
All of these come in both elongated and round types and probably take up more space then it worth to differentiate.

Seed type:
hybrid triploid (seedless) this is the fastest growing segment
of watermelon production.

hybrid diploid - Standard hybrid

Open pollinated - commercial . These would be all the traditional melons, Georgia Rattle Snake, Black Diamond, Charleton Grey, Dixie Queen, Crimson Sweet etc.

Open polinated - heirloom Which would include the melons never used used for commercial purpose like Black Tail Mountain, Cooters Black, Moon and Stars etc.

Bloom color is a useless entry in this category.

Cucumis Melo is a bit more tricky as there is a much wider array of types.

Important differntiations to me are
Charantais - C. melo var. cantalupensis
Cantaloupe - The traditional American Cantaloupe/ Muskmelon
Spanish Melon - C. melo var. inodorus These can be further divided into Honeydews, Canarys, etc
Crenshaw
Galia melon- This hybrid cross between a Spanish melon and a cantaloupe is rapidly gaining.
Crisp melon- This melon which has a taste and texture between a cantalope and Armenian cucumber.
I will try to rethink this as I have more time. rather hectic week.

This message was edited Jan 26, 2006 5:53 PM

I was toying with suggesting skin colors, but they are so varied and diverse, you could list a whole page...and some of the canteloupe types will start out one color and end up another when ripe..

I think the sizes should cover the watermelons and canteloupe categories together.. Ginger's Pride is a canteloupe type that can get 22 pounds or more, and some of the smaller Asian melons only get to 1lb max. (Tigger)

Starting the size/weight category at 'under 1 lb and ending with 'over 50 lbs' could cover the whole listing.

Addendum:
Disease tolerance:
Fusarium wilt
Anthracnose
Powdery Mildew
Downy Mildew

Back to melons and trying to be all inclusive:

Flesh Color
Dark red
Light red/Pink ( usually listed as pink)
Yellow/ Salmon
Orange /Gold)
Cream
Green (Cantaloupes, Honeydews, Galia melons and Spanish melons
White (This would pertain primarily to the Spanish and Crisp melons) I am not to sure that a Univeral listing would be helpful when it comes to appearance.

Limited to watermelons it could be something like this:
Appearance ( Citrullus lanatus)
Dark Green
Medium Green
Light Green
Dark Green Striped
Light Green Striped
Grey
Mottled
Yellow/Gold
Shape; Could apply to all melons
Round
Oval
Long
Appearance (Cucumis Melo ...)
Dark Green
Light Green
Yellow
Gold
Netted
Smooth
Sutured

wouldn't storage life be useful as well? Some of the melons have no shelf life, and need to be used immediately, others, however, can be plucked and the taste will not be affected after a few weeks.

Flesh color, size, and seed type would be nice info to have in the plant files.....in my opinion.

Climbing
trellis
sprawling
bush

This matters to me, I like the ones that climb and hang.

-Bob

Are most of the seeds classified as climbing, trellis, sprawling and bush? (I know bush types are noted as such, but I'm thinking that trellis, climbing and sprawling are all pretty much the same - it's up to the gardener to decide how to "corral" those vines ;o)

Ditto for storage - is this information readily from seed catalogs?

Terry,
Yes, there are just basically bush types and vining types........though some are listed as short vining types or semi- bush.

As far as shelf life goes.........Most catalog descriptions SHOULD tell if the keeping qualities are especially good or short lived as compared to average shelf life.

Agreed Terry. Melons are bush or vining. Any vining melon can be trellised, but I have never met one that climbs with out help and I have grown a lot of different types. An analogy would be the "climbing" tomato which is nothing more than a large vine indeterminate. While Spanish type melons as a group have a very long shelf life.and there are some cantaloupes with almost zero shelf life, That information is probably best left to the comments section where one can be fairly specific for that cultivar. It is highly variable even among groups such as cantaloupes. Even among the Honeydews (a subset of Spanish melons) shelf life is highly variable.

While most catalogue descriptions do not list shelf life for melons., One can surmised that a cantaloupe designated as a shipper has a reasonable shelf life. One example is one that was discussed a few days ago, The OLD Time Tennesee. It has zero shelf life, but you have to read between the lines to deduced that from statements like. "so smelly, you can find them in the dark."

This message was edited Feb 17, 2006 6:20 PM

Also "shelf-life" is real subjective in hot humid climates like ours. Even things like garlic don't have the storage time here that they probably do in most parts of the country!