Yes! You Can Grow Melons By The Coast!

Okay, so when I say "by the coast", I'm not talking about an actual view of the water.  But here in southern Sonoma County, we're about 20 miles from the beach which gives us gloriously cool nights in the summer.  But that also makes it tricky to grow melons, which prefer the heat of the more inland areas.

I've had great luck with short season melons, though, particularly cantaloupes.  When buying seeds, I look for the shortest number of days, hybrids resistant to powdery mildew, and/or varieties noted for performing well in cooler climates.  Some suggestions are Sugar Cube, Arava, and the French heirloom Petit Gris de Rennes.  I'm sure there are more, I've just not tried them.

One melon I have tried and rejected was Crane Melons.  Being I live about 2 miles from where the Crane Melon was originally bred, it seemed like a no-brainer.  And indeed, I did have success growing them.  But I found the flavor to be very lackluster.  I can buy bland melons at the store, so they are off my list. 

Also don't expect to grow big melons like you find at the market.  This Arava melon is about as big as mine get.  I could swear as a kid back in the 1960's this was the average size of cantaloupes bought at the supermarket.  I may be mistaken, but I'm guessing, much like strawberries, growers are growing varieties that offer the biggest fruit, but often at the expense of taste.  So while you might get smaller melons, they far make up for it in terms of texture and taste.

This Arava is an Israeli hybrid with green flesh and taste closer to a honeydew.

My Sugar Cube melons are even smaller, but you get a surprising amount of fruit from one melon as they're thin skinned and the juicy fruit isn't relegated to just the center.

Notes on growing:

• Melons grow on trailing vines, and I don't have a lot of space.  So I plant mine at the edge of the bed and train them to trail over the side where they won't compete with the other plants in the bed.  With my surrounding ground rocked, it also has the bonus of not having the fruit sitting on wet soil.
  
  
  
• Pictured above is about 18 plants, which is probably about 6 too many, but given I love fruit and melons are the only fruit I grow, I often can't help myself!

Trellising:

• If you know my garden, you know that I will trellis just about anything that I can grow UP instead of OUT.  It's such a great space-saver for those of us who don't have acreage.  However, I would NOT trellis melons for one reason:  As they ripen they detach from the vine.  The last thing you want is your sweet, ripe melons to take a 4' plunge to the ground when ready to harvest.  For that reason, I leave them to trail on the ground.  If you do trellis, you'll want to sling your melons to protect them from gravity.

Staggering Plantings For The Biggest Bang:

• I typically find all my melons ripen at the same time.  So this year, I'm having luck experimenting with staggered planting, which means starting the seeds several weeks apart so you have them producing over a longer period of time.  You can only go so far with this, because planting too early, the plants will sit and do nothing until the weather warms up.  Plant them too late, and you'll lose the longer heat melons need to grow.  This year, I managed to stagger 3 plantings so the starts were going into the ground between 4/15 and 5/31.  And despite an unusually cool summer, that seems to be working well.

So there you go!  If you're growing melons in cooler short-season climates, I'd love to hear what varieties work for you, and any other tips I may not have covered.  I'm always aching to try new things!