Easy Going Sunday: Melon Update

It is mid-August, but my melons aren't ready yet. 

Usually I would start to pick melons about now, but May was unusually wet and cool. So was most of June. I planted when I could, in late June. There is no use planting melons before the soil has warmed up.

I will have a few melons after Labor Day.

Melons for sale in supermarkets in America work their way from south to north from Guatemala and Honduras, to Mexico, to the southern U.S., and now to the north. If you have been eating melons in the past six weeks they have probably come from the American Southwest. Melons from Yuma, Arizona and the Imperial Valley at the southern tip of California get planted in February and start being harvestable in May.

The best prices for Yuma and Imperial Valley melons come at their early harvest in May and then their second-crop melons harvested in November. Arizona and California growers plant as early as possible in the winter. They try to capture all the heat of the winter sun by planting on a south-facing slope and sometimes with a layer of plastic. The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension office demonstrates.

Melons grown for bulk harvest and shipping are picked a week or more before I would pick them. Melons picked green have longer shelf life. And they sell. Customers don't know what a melon is supposed to taste like, so a tasteless melon tastes normal to them. Some people prefer a melon that is firm-fleshed. Melons in restaurant fruit salads or "fruit plate" displays look best when they cut into sharp-edged cubes or slices. Cantaloupes are displayed for color and shape.

It is possible, but unlikely, that readers of this blog in Oregon or anywhere north of the 40th degree of latitude will find local melons in grocery stores beginning now. Heads up about Farmers Markets. Merchants try to service customers, and customers who want melons want them now, while shopping, whether or not they are in season locally. Most places--even fancy places--source them just like other supermarkets, wherever they are available. The photo below is taken in June in Boston: Expensive melons in a high end store. They look great. They were picked very, very green.

A "Whole Foods" type market. 

I took photographs of melons at Costco two weeks ago because the price was so wonderful. By wonderful, I mean expensive. Expensive melons mean that a farmer like myself could earn enough to go back into serious melon growing: $4.50 each, about $1.40 a pound. No thanks. Picking melons is easy, but once one has a dozen nice melons in a bin to carry to the side of a field, the bin weighs 50 pounds. I get backaches. 

Tuscan style. Expensive!!

Picked under-ripe in central California

A vine-ripe melon slips off the vine with a slight push of the thumb. Most of the melon taste comes in that final week between when they are picked green for shipping and when they are ripe. Tuscan-type melons have a better taste when picked underripe than do most varieties of cantaloupes, so if you want a melon out of season, look for a Tuscan variety. 

Stem remnants mean it was picked green. A vine-ripe melon has a neat smooth navel--an "innie."  A melon that looks like this one below is not necessarily completely tasteless, but the stem is a warning notice. 

A common "shipper" melon. Possibly a "Hale's Best."

What to do if you want a excellent melons now?  If you live in the American south, go to a Farmers Market and buy local. Look for a melon with an "innie." If you live in the north, you can start looking now, but you might have to wait another week or two.

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