When to Slip Cantaloupes

I remember recently reading a post where someone wanted to know when to pick their cantaloupes, but I could not find the thread so I decided to make a new post.

I like to pick cantaloupes when the vine starts to separate from the fruit and is at the stage where it slips easily (soft slip) from the cantaloupe. Bear in mind that these ones are ripe and do not keep for very long. Shippers or grocery ones are usually picked on a hard slip.

Here is a picture of an Burpee's Ambrosia Cantaloupe that is ready to pic. Notice the vine has started to separate from the cantaloupe. You can almost bump the stem with very little force and it will just flop over and completely separate from the cantaloupe.

Jerry

Perfect! Do you do watermelons?? Ruined a couple testing them by cutting and replacing a wedge of rind...

Notice where the stem is attached to this green cantaloupe and compare it to the picture above.

Great pics, Jerry!

grownut,

I've grown cantaloupes often, but never watermelons, mainly because of space. Now that I am retired and have enlarged my garden I plan to grow watermelons next year.

My knowledge about when to pick melons comes from what I have read or have been told by truck farmers. The stem on watermelons *** does not slip or pull *** away from the melons when they are ripe.

I ask a truck farmer once to explain to me how to tell when a melon is ripe. He explained there are three sounds that you can tell when a melon is ready, ready now, ready in a couple days and in something like ready in four or five days. He picked out three melons and laid them side by side and let me test them. The distinction is recognized by sound and vibration when the melon is bumped with open hands. He described the sound and I took notes, but now I can't find my notes. Guess I'll have to pay him another visit. LOL

Here is a picture of some cantaloupes growing in a cage and supported between two bamboo sticks.

Jerry

This morning's cantaloupe harvest along with 4 lbs 10 ozs of okra. The three cantaloupes weighted 4 lbs 2 ozs, 3 lbs 14 ozs, and 3 lbs 2 ozs.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that these will be sweet because this past Thursday it rained 1 1/4". Just my luck. I have been so careful about watering. I wanted to hold off watering about a week before the cantaloupes were ready so they would be sweet. Can't outsmart Mother Nature. She'll beat ya every time. LOL

Beautiful. Thanks for that! yeah...I thump and feel, but never get it right...always end up picking too soon...wish that guy would do a YouTube Vid...ha!

Another picture of some cantaloupes growing in a 10-gal plastic Wal Mart tub and concrete re-wire. Notice the little loupe hanging behind the hoe handle. At some point I will have to support it by placing something beneath it.

Behind the cantaloupes in the red bottomless 1/3 section of a 55-gal drum are pole speckled beans. They have climbed out the top of a 7 1/2 foot concrete re-wire cage and have grown about 2/3 way back down and started up again.

Cantaloupes will fall off the vine by themselves when they feel like it, if you don't get around to picking them.

Grownut, I grow watermelons for the farmer's market and for us to eat. I know the sound that texasrockgarden is talking about but I can't describe it to you. I look for the little tendril where the stem attaches to the vine to turn brown all the way down and the melon should be creamy or yellow on the bottom. Also, just looking across the field I can see a change in the sheen on the rinds of the melons. When they're ripe, they acquire a duller appearance.
I was gone for three weeks, we just got back yesterday morning. I picked about a hundred watermelons. There were also a lot of overripe and rotten ones in the field. Lots of the canaloupes had gotten overripe and many had rotted.

Calalily, Thanks for the info.

Sorry to hear about your loses. It has to be a real heart breaker seeing all the melons and cantaloupes just rotting away in the field. there goes your profit.

100 melons....hope y'all were wearing your back supports.

Thanks!! This is the first year I've had any success with the watermelons since moving here and we are FLOODED. 150-200% of normal rainfall and a cool website... http://water.weather.gov/

I use the same method for watermelons that Calalily suggested, and it works well for me. I am puzzled about my other melons, though, because I have a bunch of French varieties and they don't seem to slip. I finally picked one - I think it was a Précoce du Roc - because the skin was yellowing, and it was just perfect; we had it with lunch today. But it had not slipped at all, nor have my other ones.

A lot of the cucumis melons don't slip. Charentais, crenshaws and honeydews don't.

I used to think that the netted melons would slip and the smooth-skinned won't, but there seem to be exceptions to that.

Then the question becomes, "How do you know when they're ripe?" You hate to waste a perfectly good melon by picking it too early!

You have to look up the variety you're growing. Ideally, the company who sells you the seeds will have accurate information.

I did some searching online and found this:

Un melon sucré est un melon cueilli à maturité. Pour reconnaître le stade de cueillette , c’est très facile : Soit la feuille juste après le melon mur jaunie ( les autres feuilles restent bien vertes ). Ou l’attache du pédoncule devient translucide et apparaît la zone de détachage.

They're saying that you can tell when a melon is ripe by watching to see when the leaf just past the melon becomes yellow or wilted, while the rest remain green. Or when the site of attachment becomes transparent and shows a slip zone, but we already knew THAT. The yellow or wilted leaf sounds similar to the method for watermelons, so I guess it makes sense. I'll have to try it.

well done.

Jerry, what variety of cantaloupes are you growing? I bet the smell is heavenly when they're ripe!

Of course, with the hodgepodge that my melon patch is right now, it's not easy to find which leaf is just past the melon. No nice neat directional signs showing which way it grew. And when I went to look a few minutes ago I saw that a turtle had gotten there before me and had started on one of them. So I picked that and two others that probably aren't quite ripe but one was starting to split from the rain, so I figured what the heck....

Melons are some of the nicest perfume there is. I remember buying a ripe one at a farm market and loving the fragrance in my car all the way home!

stephanietx

"Burpee's Ambrosia"....been growing it since the 90 's and yes, the fragrance is outstanding. This one has been an easy grower for me.

They are in the fridge now getting cold. Tomorrow I will cut one and take a picture to post up.

A woman stopped me at the cantalope display once, cause I was pressing on the ends and smelling them. She asked if I wanted to learn how to pick a ripe cantalope, and said that what I was doing was not gonna get me one. She had one already in her shopping cart and picked it up and gave it to me. She told me to pick it up with both hands, put it to my ear, and give it a good shake. I did and I heard "sloshing" inside. "That's how you know if you have a ripe cantalope," she said. If you can hear the seeds and juice sloshing around inside, the melon is ripe.

Well, I've tried it on several trips and, sure enough, every time I bring home a cantalope that sloshes and has seeds bouncing around inside, it's a sweet, ripe melon.

That's my melon, and I'm sloshing by it!

Linda

What a great thread -

I've learned to withold water for about a week to make cantalopes sweeter - although if the ones I grew this year were any sweeter, they would be pure sugar.

I've learned that shaking a cantalope and listening for a "sloshing" sound will tell you when the supermarket ones are ripe - I had actually given up buying them from the market because I was almost always disappointed in them.

I've learned that Charentais types do not "slip" - which answers why the ones I grew last year burst open - I never did work out how to tell when they were ripe.

I've learned that you can tell when a melon is ripe by watching to see when the leaf just past the melon becomes yellow or wilted, while the rest remain green. Or when the site of attachment becomes transparent and shows a slip zone.

This year I had some volunteers from last year's Charentais types - and they all "slipped" right after turning the most beautiful lemon-yellow - and they are absolutely super sweet!

I have my eye on another area of garden - and as soon as I kill the Burmuda grass, there will be more cantalopes next year.

Well the thread is about cantaloupes (which pretty much pick themselves).

But about watermelons, I also look for the surface of the melon to transition from shiny and glossy to dull and waxy. The skin will become tough such that you can't dig a fingernail in as easily.

Also, the bottom of the melon will develop a creamy yellow spot.

The tendril on the vine closest to the melon will completely die back.

On watermelons, when in doubt, wait 2 more days. :)

I wonder if your Charentais x-pollinated with a cantaloupe.

I look for the change in color to pick mine.

Well I shook this one and it didn't slush inside so I guess it could have stayed on the vine a little longer.

I tasted very good though.

I don't know that the shaking test works for melons out of your own garden; it doesn't seem to for me. They don't slosh but they're still sweet if I use the other indices.