What types of heirloom melons grow good in Florida?

Some seed catalogs came in this week and planing my 2010 garden has begun. I was looking at the melon section and was overwelmed with how many varieties there was. I'm fairly new at this gardening business and would like any advise/sugestions on what types of heirloom melons would grow best in zone 9 Florida. Thanks :)

Susurrus - I lived in Palm Beach County for over 30 years and could not get melons/cucumbers to live long enough to eat. Powdery Mildew got them every time! So my best advice is to find melons resistant to powdery mildew.

You can imagine how delighted I was at the first melon I ate from my NC garden :)

First the bad news. This year we tried:

Ambrosia cantaloupe which was supposed to be powdery mildew-resistant, but the mildew got it anyway.
Carolina Cross watermelon did actually produce a few smallish melons, but the creeping black death (don't know its true name) would eat up the vines and then the vines would grow back out again.
Every cucumber that was anywhere near the ground got powdery mildew and did not produce well.
I fought powdery mildew on all squash and had a fairly poor year.

The good news (or hope for someone who wants to keep on trying):

By midsummer, I had become convinced that the key to keeping powdery mildew at bay was to get the vines up and off the ground just as quickly as possible. This worked very, very well with cucumbers and with spaghetti squash. I did not have an opportunity to try it with cantaloupe, but I will this next year. I realize that this doesn't help you with choosing an heirloom melon, but it is a challenge. The one I'd really like to try is Charentais melon.

Pillita - I tried keeping the melons and cucs up off the ground, but that didn't work, either.

We moved from South Florida in 2000, so hopefully there are new varieties that will do well there now.

Also, I didn't have the internet to browse for suitable varieties, I just purchased whatever seed was offered locally in the big box stores.

As to Charentais melons - the flavor is awesome! I do hope you have success growing them. I've grown them for the past two summers. You will have to catch them "just right" otherwise they split open and the bugs/ants get to them. They know a good thing when they taste it, too :)

I have read that they are absolutely wonderful - one of the best fruits anywhere on the planet. How can you resist something described that way?

Cukes that I grew in mid-summer did great. Powdery mildew was awful in the spring. I was not diligent about not wetting the plants when I watered and I quickly learned the folly of that! Picking off the bad leaves and a lot of spraying with baking soda water eventually got it under control.

Like I said, I got the cantaloupe that was supposed to be most resistant to powdery mildew, but that made no difference. I will definitely try getting it up in the air from the beginning and see if that makes a difference. We live and hopefully learn from our mistakes.

I don't know what to do about the creeping black death because I can't figure out exactly which mildew or mold it is.

Pillita - I don't know what it is either - try a search for "sooty mold" maybe that's what it is.