Melon Headed

Jack Deatherage

(10/2024) Having chosen the main theme of the 2025 Cedar Avenue Community Garden in September is not unlike asking the laughing gods "Whatcha got?" It took a week to find out just how bad next year's garden is going to be. Amy Goldman's book- "Melons- for the passionate grower" arrived within that week. Excited to begin perusing the book I skipped a nap the day it arrived!

Quickly skimming the full color plates I found the pages briefly describing the arrayed melons. Interested in the higher brix (a measure of sugar content) melons I eagerly sought out the list of catalogs that carried the melons I thought worth trialing. Eagerness changed to dismay as seed company after seed company proved to be either out of business or absorbed by some other company.

Frustrated, I went on to chase down those companies with online catalogs only to discover the melons in Goldman's book are no longer carried by the companies she listed twenty some years ago. Okay, okay. Twenty years? Of course things will have changed. Still, Google will turn up seed sources for the melons I'm looking for! Surely the laughing gods will give me a break. Right?

I found articles written twenty years ago about the melons I wanted, but no seed sources. Calming myself, I began visiting every seed catalog I've placed an order with over the last forty years. Someone must be selling the seeds passionate melon growers plant!

I lost touch with Brook Elliott, an associate editor with Mother Earth News magazine, back when Yahoo closed down its "group" boards. Brook warned a gardening group- Heirloom Growers Garden -which I was a member of, that two things were going to happen in the near future. Seed companies would consolidate rapidly. And many of the open pollinated varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers we enjoyed would vanish from the market place as the few remaining seed companies focused on the hybrid seeds they could make the most profit from.

It didn't take much of a deep dive to discover the dozen or so catalogs I buy from are all carrying basically the same offerings with an occasional "oddball"- to keep things interesting. Brook certainly knew what he was talking about!

Having invoked the oddballs, I'm reminded there are more options than the old standbys of Burpee, Gurney's, Johnny's, Territorial and their like. Adaptive Seeds, Mary's Heirloom Seeds, Experimental Farm Network and Seed Savers Exchange, among others, offer cultivars the bigger companies do not. Seed Savers Exchange alone has a gardeners yearbook that lists over 15,000 varieties of vegetables, fruits, grains, herbs, and flowers available this year!

As much as I'd like to get back into saving open pollinated varieties that large seed companies are no longer selling, I'm aware of two major problems- 1, Keeping the seeds of a variety pure, either by isolating them or hand pollinating them. 2, I'll never keep track of what I'm saving. Chaos may be one of the gods I recognize, but as a child of, I'm simply too chaotic in my habits. Umm... 3, and most important! I'm lazy. Which brings me to some saviors. Joseph Lofthouse, Carol Deppe and David The Good- all promoting the creation of landrace fruits and vegetables.

Landrace- a cultivated, genetically chaotic variety that has evolved in a specific area and has adapted to the soil and climate conditions as well as the cultivation habits of the gardener. Basically, an heirloom. (David the Good is hardcore! Sows seed and walks away. The plants survive or not!)

Melons (Cucumis melo) seems the perfect starting place to teach kids about pollination, cross pollination and the creation of landraces. Landrace melon creation would require the kids to eat the melons- melon seeds being viable when the melons are ripe. The kids would save the seeds of the melons they like best for the following year's garden. Toss in the native bees that have been working this year's melons, add the topics of soil health, composting, weather, water sources/conservation, and we've got multiple STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) possibilities the librarians can work with.

If everything goes the way I have it plotted out in my mind- Oh, that's rich! Anyhow, I figure another patch of the town's current farmers market lot, say 50 feet by 20 feet, would be adequate for the first year's melon experiment. Given we've spent close to $7,000 (less than half of which came from the town and private donations) the first two years on long lasting garden items- metal raised beds, foam stock tanks, rain barrels, garden hoses, watering cans, purchased garden soil, T-posts, fencing, cattle panels, perennial flowers, bird baths, rocking chairs, cordless mower and string trimmer, batteries, straw bales, seedlings and seeds- we needn't dump anywhere near that much money into a melon patch.

Based on today's prices and on what I think the melon patch will need... I'm guesstimating $240 for cattle panels and T-posts to trellis the melons on. About $400 for straw bales to be used as mulch throughout the entire garden and maybe $300 more for four yards of garden soil to top off the current raised beds. Melon seeds? I can't see me spending more than $100... Well, actually I can see me spending way more than that, but the DW and First Sister won't let me.

$1,040 into the garden's expansion is doable, probably without me asking the town for help next year. I found someone who's volunteering to haul panels and T-posts for me. The place we have been buying garden soil from is giving me a break on delivery, though I might cut costs there by getting mushroom soil to add to the soil in the lot and to top off and mix into the current raised beds. Assuming I'll be allowed to build the expansion.

However! The laughing gods will have their momentary guffaw so I'm also working out a melon experiment within the confines of the current garden, which would be the smarter thing to do anyhow. But why would I start doing smart things this late in my life?

Not getting the melon patch would free up the money I've already spent, in my head, for some books the librarians can use to expand their STEM program to encompass elementary and middle school kids. "The Maryland Master Gardener Handbook" would be the first of several books I think would be useful. Currently, not one of the Frederick County libraries maintains a copy of the tome.

I think the copy I borrowed from Montgomery County Public Library is a 2016 reprint of the 2012 publication. Amazon has a used copy of the 2012 version for under $60. The University of Maryland Extension has the newer 2016 copy for $69, plus shipping. Wonder Book has a copy, though which one is unclear, for under $30 if I'm willing to drive to Frederick to fetch it home. Or I can preorder the latest revised and expanded edition from John Hopkins University Press for $90, plus shipping.

If I buy a copy, it will be on loan to the librarians. I've seen donated books leave the Emmitsburg branch library and never return.