I'm growing Early Silverline and Delice de Table melons this year, and I could use some advice. What size trellis would be sufficient? Any pointers on pruning techniques? Have any of you tried these varieties? Whatever you can think of would be helpful.
Thanks : )
need melon advice
I don't know about Early Silverline, but if Delice de Table is an older French variety they have very specific methods of pruning these, usually involving cutting off the stem above the first two true leaves and then cutting again after the next three or four leaves per each stem. If you're interested let me know and I can send you some more information. I'm growing them this year, too, along with several other French melons. The first year I grew Précoce du Roc I didn't follow the scheme on the packet because I wasn't sure how to do it, and I got almost nothing!
Which other ones are you growing? I have seeds for several others (during a fit of "garden fever", I ordered more varieties than I could plant in one season). I was thinking of planting Minnesota Midget in addition to the other two, because the MM vines are only supposed to be about three feet long. I also have Charantais, Petit Gris de Rennes and Hearts of Gold. With all of the other stuff I'm growing though, I don't think I could manage them all at once. Maybe in 35-40 years when I retire : ) I would love some additional information - thank you!
Jenbear, I'm growing these varieties:
Quoting:
Delice de Table Melon
85-90 days. French heirloom listed by Vilmorin in 1885. Translates as “Delight of the Table.” Ribbed fruits have sweet orange flesh and weigh about 1-2 pounds. Very hard-to-find, almost extinct
Petit Gris de Rennes Melon
85 days. Dense 2 lb. fruit have orange flesh that is superbly sweet, flavorful and perfumed. This variety is early and well adapted to cool climates. The fruit weigh around 2 lbs. and have a grey-green rind. This fine French variety is of the best quality, and is the favorite melon of the French melon expert and author Bruno Defay. Rare in the USA. Our #1 requested market melon, specialty growers love them because they command top prices! We continue to receive rave reviews about this melon.
Précoce du Roc Melon
80 days. Early and well-adapted to greenhouse culture. Resistant to fusarium wilt. Mid-sized fruits, with clear green skin lightly marked at maturity. Flesh firm, deep orange, very sweet and perfumed. Sow in February to April for harvest in June to August; in May for harvest in August to September.
Noir de Carmes Melon
80 days. A beautiful and rare heirloom from France; the famous "Black Rock" melon preserved by the Carmelite monks. It was mentioned by Mawe & Abercrombie in 1787. Nearly black in color, the fruit turns orange as it ripens. They are deeply ribbed and have smooth skin. The flesh is orange in color, thick flavorful and perfumed. Excellent and unusual. The fruit weighs about 3-6 lbs. each.
I like to play around with French types; the Précoce du Roc looked the most like the wonderful melons we got at the little market near where we were staying a couple of years ago. On the Précoce du Roc packet it says to pinch off the stem above the first two true leaves, and then pinch off each of the two lateral stems just beyond the third or fourth leaves, as well as pinching off any secondary branches later on. Here's a website with pictures; it's in French but it's pretty self-explanatory. You can always Dmail me if you have questions:
http://gwmarcha.club.fr/taillemelon.htm
Leslie
That link seems to suggest that this can/should be done to any kind of melons.
I've avoided growing melons in recent years due to limited space. I'm going to try some cantaloupes with pruning. Thanks for posting this info. I would never have figured it out by myself because I would have thought the plants needed all their leaves.
Karen, the problem with google translations is that they can be sort of silly, and also misleading. For instance, they use "size" for "taille," and it should be "pruning" in this case. Also, they translate "feuilles" as "sheets" instead of "leaves."
And under Deuxième taille (Second pruning) it should say "As soon as 5 leaves have appeared on each of the two branches of the first generation, cut them above the third leaf.
"At the axil of the remaining leaves the branches of the second generation will develop."
Instead they have: "5 As soon as leaves are emerging on the two first-generation branches, cut them over the third sheet.
At the leaf axils of branches remaining second-generation dévellopperont."
And instead of this:
"In doing this in full size you will get a maximum of good fruit and especially up to early. But you can also make a simple size is limited to the first size and pinching. You will have a production later (at a time when the fruits are in abundance on the market)."
the intro at the top should read more like:
"In conducting this pruning, on the whole you will obtain a maximum number of good fruits and especially the greatest degree of earliness. But you can also stick to a simpler pruning technique by doing only the first pruning and then some pinching back. That way you'll have fruit coming later in the season (at the time when melons are abundant in the marketplace.)"
However, this method is apparently used mostly for older melon varieties in France, not for the newer ones, and probably not for the hybrids - it's too labor intensive. That may be why they have abandoned some of the ancient types. So I don't know whether this will work for a lot of our varieties.
Leslie
Sorry greenhouse gal, I thought it might be helpful
Karen, I've tried them before and found them kind of confusing. Nothing to apologize about, though! I thought you might find the differences in translations interesting, in fact. I did.
Leslie
What perplexes me is that they seem to be claiming a "tardive" crop to be an advantage, when it is the last thing I want. I want my melons as soon as I can get them!
But it does suggest that someone might prune some of the vines and let the others go, in order to extend the season.
Actually they're not claiming that as an advantage. They're saying that if you only do the first pruning and some pinching back you'll end up with a later crop which will be ready when most other melons are on the market. In that case you won't get the top prices you could demand if you were able to bring them to the market earlier, when melons are still scarce. But if you use their three or four stage pruning program you'll get fruit much sooner and presumably can charge more. (I am assuming this is about money, or at least being able to sell your product easily.)
Another point made on a different French site is that by pruning the three or four stage way you increase the number of female flowers and they also come earlier, so that increases your yield.
When I grew Précoce du Roc last year the packet gave a brief verbal description of a three-stage pruning, but since I'd never heard of that concept before and couldn't figure out what they meant without a diagram to make it clearer, I didn't do it. I didn't get any melons, either! So this year I'll try to follow their advice, assuming the seeds are still viable.
Well, that would make sense if the pruning did bring in the female flowers earlier, but it seems counterintuitive.
I might try it on a vine or two.
I would just try it if you're growing an older French variety; I don't think our types are bred for that sort of treatment. There's a bit about that in one of Elliot Coleman's books, which is where I learned that it was done for the heirlooms but not for the new ones. He likes French varieties of a number of different fruits and veggies; the problem is finding them here!
I'm growing Charentais, but they are US bred.
otoh, I love experiments
I'm making a run at charentais this year myself.
If you try that method of pruning you should report back!
I'll try it--otherwise the melons will take over the planet down here. I'm probably planting mine this weekend.
Wow - I guess you can do that in 9a. We're a long way from melons here! Good luck and let us know how it works!
OK, I'd never heard of Charentais until I got the SSE catalog this year, and now here are three of us all planning on growing it this year. Did you get sucked in by the description, too, or do you have experience with it?
I've grown Charentais before and it's good, but one thing to watch out for - the vines shade the roots, so if you move them it often makes the roots dry out.
I'm going to grow them on a trellis, so I'll have to double up the mulch to protect the roots. Thanks.
I grew it for the first time last year and totally converted from cantaloupes.
I've grown Charentais for about 10 years but I'm trying some others this year too.
Did you find they were sensitive to disturbance?
And which others are you trying this year?
Last year a had a watermelon seedling get cut off [cut worm?] perhaps like the first prune suggested on the melons. When I pulled up the roots last fall, that root system was fantastic in root diameter and such......mine are never tap rooted deeply but horizonal. I don't know if that early inadvertent prune was responsible or not.
I don't find them sensitive to anything--they grow like crazy here, but we have a warm (to put it mildly) spring, summer, and fall (usually half way thru Nov). Besides Charentais (which isn't the best tasting IMHO) I'm growing retato degli ortolani, zatta, and a polish watermelon called Janosik--but definitely not until I get all the peppers planted, pole and bush beans planted, and some more cucumbers planted. Melons are always last--they never seem to mind it when I rip out the tomato plants they grow around (we do tomatoes twice a year--early spring and late summer).
Debbie
Those melons sound interesting; where did you find them? And yeah, I didn't think Charentais were the sweetest melons I've grown, but that seems to depend a lot on the year as well as the variety.
I wish I could grow tomatoes twice a year!
growititalian.com
a lot of their stuff is french too
I'm trying Charentais too this year as well as Petit Gris de Rennes and Early Hanover. It would be great if this type of pruning works on most varieties of melons. That would mean I would be able to experiment even more because the vines can be kept so small. I grow on trellises but would be very interested to see how this would turn out.
That might not work with other melons. According to Eliot Coleman in his "Four-Season Harvest" book (p. 49-50)
Quoting:
We were told our [pruning] information only applied to the old-time varieties. The melon research from the 1960's, the source of our information, had been superseded by new techniques beginning in the 1980's. Although the changes were horticultural, the driving force was economic. The rising cost of labor had made pruning too expensive. ...Melon germoplasm had offered other options. Monoecious varieties were now available which formed their female flowers sooner and thus did not need pruning. In fact, pruning could seriously reduce yields of the new cultivars. Furthermore, all our attempts at trellising had been misplaced because, as we were now told, the old techniques were most suited for extra-early heated crops in specialized greenhouses. ... However, we still planned to get seeds of the renowned old varieties from seed-saving groups so we could grow them with the old techniques and have a basis for flavor comparison.
I think all the varieties I'm growing are the older ones, and on the packet for Précoce du Roc it even tells me to "pinch the stem above the first two leaves, then the two lateral stems above the third or fourth leaves, and then, later, the secondary branches."
Leslie
all of mine are older varieties too so I'm going to try it--mainly in hopes of keeping them at a manageable size yet not reduce the yield.
Debbie
This could be interesting!
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