The Prescott Fond Blanc Melon

Our one melon.

We've never had much luck growing melons, but, since this is a year for experimenting in the garden, I decided to try again. Enter the Prescott Fond Blanc melon. The French heirloom melon looked interesting, so I bought a pack of seeds. As with nearly all our other seeds this year, we planted them directly in the garden bed and waited for the magic to happen. 

The seedlings appeared fairly quickly but they were slow growers. By early July, however, our two lovely plants were well-established.

Two melon plants.

It took another couple of weeks before tiny melons started to appear. There were maybe half a dozen tiny fuzzballs. Only two of the little green puffs turned into melons, but they put on weight quickly and claimed the garden bed as their own.

A proto-melon on July 25.

Melon #1 on August 8.

Melon #2 on August 8.

Every day (or more likely every other day as I am an admittedly lazy gardener) I went to the garden and contemplated the melons. It has been a wet summer, so I took to turning them slightly so their "down" side didn't get squishy. I poked at them gently, trying to decide if they were getting any softer and thus ready to pick. Their color slowly changed from gray-green to a khaki color, and I knew it was nearly time.

I kept telling myself, one more day, just one more day. When I finally decided to pick melon #1, I was too late. When I reached for the melon, a cloud of small flies rose around me, and when I actually grasped it, the stem fell off. The top had split open along the ribs and it was infested with tiny insect. 

Melon #1, September 3. Ew.

I watched melon #2 much more closely after that. I finally pulled the trigger three days later. No bugs this time, which I took as a good sign. It certainly wasn't the prettiest melon I'd ever seen, (even after two very thorough scrubbings) but I was cautiously optimistic.

Melon #2 is not winning any beauty pageants.

As the knife sliced though it like butter, my hopes rose. It was beautiful inside!

Melon #2, seeds removed.

The lovely creamy orange flesh was soft, but not overly so, and it smelled divine! It tasted like a cantaloupe but not as sweet.  

A fair amount of melon for two people.

It was nice to get one edible melon this summer, especially since I didn't put that much effort into it.  I don't think we will bother with melons again, though. There are so many other vegetables that will happily grow in our limited garden space that are more productive. But it was a fun experiment!