Melon - Kherson Cantaloupe
Melon - Kherson Cantaloupe
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Cucumis melo
75 Days
NCS Original
NEW for 2025!
This breeding group originated from a single plant that produced orange-fleshed fruits in my 2023 grow-out of Kherson Market Melon. It had a really outstanding flavour, and seeing as how I didn't yet have a cantaloupe in the NCS catalogue I decided to turn it into a project.
On the outside these melons look basically the same as the original population, producing large fruits that average just over a kilogram in weight, with a thick rind and varied combinations of smooth and netted skin. Some fruits are totally smooth, while others are slightly wrinkled like a tropical melon. Some have the classic ribbed shape of a true cantaloupe.
Peak ripeness occurs when the yellow colour has mostly transitioned from a lemony hue to more of a golden orange. It can be a little tricky to assess at first, but you'll get the hang of it after a melon or three.
In this group of plants about 80% of the fruits had orange flesh and a lovely cantaloupe flavour. The remainder were 50% ivory, 25% light green, and 25% marbled combinations of orange-ivory or orange-green. I was pretty happy to see such a large portion of plants that produce cantaloupe-esque fruits. Controlled pollination with an eye towards stabilization is the eventual goal for this population, but I've been having fun working with maternal lines so might just let these do their thing without intervention next time I grow them.
A note about seed colour - some of the melons have white seed and others are more of a golden yellow, so the seed you receive will be two-toned.
Our original stockseed for the Kherson Market Melon came from the Experimental Farm Network in 2023. EFN got their sample from the USDA and had them grown out by Lina Bird of the Ujamma Cooperative Farming Alliance. The seeds were originally collected from a farmer at the Kherson farmer's market in southern Ukraine in August 1982 by two researchers, Dr Kay H. Asay and Dr. Melvin D. Rumbaugh from the USDA and Utah State University.
