Dear friends, I am in the mountains of New Mexico in the US. We have a very short season, less than 100 days from frost to frost. This is my first year trying to grow melons here. I am testing several varieties and will keep and replant whatever grows. The only thing I didn’t calculate was that I have been testing also three varieties of Armenian cucumbers (also cucumis melo). So I wonder what I should expect from the seeds I save and plant next year.
Do melons cross easily? I haven’t read about this specifically.
Has anybody tried a landrace of melons that has included Armenian cucs in the mix? What happened?
Of course my intention was to have sweet melons separate from the Armenian cucs.
I’ve found out how beautifully the Armenians grow in here! It’s been a joy to see and to harvest, and of course to eat them! A full success right there! The sweet melons are not thriving. There’s only one little Noir de Carmes that is a little smaller than a tennis ball right now and a few tinny little ones that are trying really hard to grow from Joseph’s Muskmelon Landrace.
Oh, please share with me any ideas, thoughts or experiences you’ve had in this regard!
They are in the same species so there are no barriers for crossing, save distance. As melons crosspollinate easily, it’s almost certain that you will have some crosses. Even 5 meters between could lower the cross pollination, but it really depends on what pollinators you have and where they have their nest. I don’t see any other disadvantage from cross between the 2 types except that their uses are different and so you might have to select for taste again. That would (almost) require that you do selfing and then save seeds from the fruits that have good taste to be used as melon. I say almost because I started with cross between more sour type of melon in the mix and it has since disappeared without isolation/selfing. Not even that much selection. Only remember one with bland cucumber type fruits years ago, but otherwise it just seems to have disappeared. Maybe I was lucky or it has something to do with how it’s inherited, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that. I do not know how it’s inherited in armenian cucumbers. You might need to also do controlled grow-out from every fruit to see that it didn’t jump a generation. Then only carry on from those where all have desired taste. Or you could just see what happens first with selection. I mean it’s nothing dangerous and if you like to grow armenian cucumbers, then it wouldn’t that bad to have some pop up. If that doesn’t work, then go to isolation/grow outs.
Hey Jesse, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. It is very interesting how you began with a sour type of melon. I am definitely not familiar with those.
I think I will wait and see what I get from the seeds I collect this year. The Armenians are fairly apart from the sweet melons so hopefully there won’t be much intercrossing.
Do you have any varieties for melons or cucs that you specially enjoy? I am also starting a lanrace with many varieties of cucs. Perhaps there’s some I should consider adding to my mix?
Thanks again! It’s so nice to have this space to learn from one another.
Neither did I, but apparently it belongs to one main groups of melons (although not sure if it shares taste with other members of the group or if it’s some other common feature). It’s variety called “mango” or “vine peach”, but that’s because of the fruits looks, not taste. Taste is more like sour apple, which in itself is not bad, but not what you want from a melon. But I bought it because it’s one of the best suited for short season and that wasn’t wrong. I’m sure part of it lives on in my population.
I haven’t paid that much attention to the taste of varieties I add to the population. I’m not in a position to be picky. If they survive they get added. Varieties generally aren’t bad tasting and I don’t mind variety at the moment. I would say even storability comes before taste, as long as it’s sweet(ish) and has melon flavour of some sort. Only thing I don’t really like are fruits that are mushy because they are little hard to process (I usually dry my excess) and probably also don’t store well. I must not have storable melons in my population as storing 2 weeks from ripening would be a miracle. But I’m adding a variety that is supposed to store for months.
My main lines of inquiry right now are cucumber melons for early flowering trait and wilds to increase genetic base and hopefully find something useful in my climate. Both I will do controlled crosses in isolation to first select back the tasty melon traits and then set them loose. I’m especially interested in wilds as what I have seen in other species is that adding wilds or interspecific crosses greatly improves their performance. It also makes sense as that way you are more likely to get combinations of genes that have never met. It’s a lot of work, but when you try to break completely new ground, you have to go where not many have gone before.
This year I grew some Korean melon seeds I saved from a previous year when I was also growing tigger melon and Armenian cucumbers. Most of them look like regular Korean melons, but one plant is giving me these:
We picked a couple thinking they were just short Armenian cucumbers, but they were much smaller and had more mature, inedible seeds. There are at least two this size, so hopefully I’ll get some mature ones before the season is over and can see how they turn out.
These three varieties are the only muskmelon varieties that we know for sure don’t trigger oral allergy syndrome (or pollen-food allergy syndrome) in my wife, so they are the only ones we are growing currently.
The Korean melons are the only ones that taste anything like a “classic” melon. The tigger melons looks neat and smell amazing, but then have very little actual flavor from what we’ve seen so far. I’m hoping a cross between the two will result in stronger smell and flavor in a single fruit. For the Armenian cucumber I guess I’m hoping for a larger fruit overall. A sweet melon the size and shape of a mature Armenian cucumber would be amazing.
I figure I’ll just keep buying seeds to ensure I keep getting proper Armenian cucumbers as well. Even better would be a melon variety that could be picked early for “cucumbers” and later for sweet melons. I’m taking a more lazy “see what happens” approach to this particular project right now, though.
Of course I will be willing to share seeds if anything interesting does happen.
This truly sounds fascinating. I feel like you that we cannot be picky. It a huge blessing to find some plants to make it in our short seasons.
I truly hope I can keep some seed. I wonder how soon I should let some unpicked to grow and mature. I feel bad about not picking them and stopping that plant’s production.
Oh, Paul, thanks for sharing this! So you have right there a beautiful example of a mix. They are so pretty. Wouldn’t that be the ideal? To have faster and reliably maturing sweet melons, what ever shape they may be.
Please do comeback and share more details when the season is over. I would love to know more.
I will definitely look into the other varieties you mention, have never tried them.
The smaller one looks like a regular Tigger melon. The bigger one looks like a cross between Korean melon and Tigger melon. I may have pulled it too early. I also have some growing that look like regular Korean melons.
