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fatboyreptiles

missed this ......not sure how though

fatboyreptiles
10 years ago

We tried growing banana cantaloupe this year with one plant it has grown all over the garden but we only saw flowers with a few tiny fruits started.We missed this one and I have no idea how we did.....

Comments (7)

  • sorie6 zone 6b
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow looks nice!! Happy eating!

  • fatboyreptiles
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I figure one plant and one fruit.....nice ratio...LOL

  • slowpoke_gardener
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I will be interested in how this one turns out. I don't think I have heard of this type of cantaloupe. I had small cantaloupes come up in the compost pile this year. They are small, round and very sweet, but I have no idea what they are. I have harvested around 10, but it looks like the hot, dry weather is about to get them.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Fatboyreptiles, It was hiding! Melons and cucumbers are notorious for hiding behind and underneath leaves and other plant parts and then suddenly appearing to "come out of nowhere", when really they were there all along just quietly growing and getting bigger and bigger.

    Banana melon is Cucumis melo and the Cucumis melo plants I grow always seem kind of slow to get started producing in my garden. Even when I plant them in April or early May, they mostly vine until late June and then they kick into flowering and fruiting. I usually don't get to harvest any sort of Cucumis melo type melons until July, and then they go crazy in August and September and it is hard to keep up with harvesting them all.

    Your banana melon might be a little later this year than it normally would be if you're in a part of OK that had a lot of rain and clouds in June and July. The Cucumis melo type melons are real heat-lovers that can stall when it is rainy, cooler than average and cloudy here in the summer.

    You also could be having trouble getting more fruit if pollinators just aren't finding the flowers and pollinating them. I grow a form of Armenian Cucumber (also Cucumis melo, just like your banana cantaloupe) in the same area where I grow regular pickling cucumbers, and the bees seem to spend a lot more time and energy visiting the pickling cucumber plants' flowers than the Armenian cucumber flowers. I don't know why they favor one form of flower over the other, but they do. So, I don't usually see my Armenian cukes produce a whole lot of fruit until the pickling cukes are done and I've yanked out the plants. Once the Armenian cukes are all that's left in that area, the bees spend more time pollinating their flowers.

    Larry, Banana melon, aka banana cantaloupe, is very closely related to Armenian cucumber, which you and I (and others) grow. Look at the photo above and see how it just looks like a big fat Armenian Cucumber that's been left on the vine a long time.....same pale green fruit, same ribs.....

    You leave a banana melon on the vine until its skin turns yellow. By the time the skin is yellow, the flesh has turned from pale green to a sort of pale salmon color. Some people say they smell and taste like bananas, some say the flavor has a hint of pineapple. Some folks love them, some think they bland. One has to grow them and taste them to discover if they are a "keeper" for their garden.

    Some seed companies try to portray the banana melons as being highly unusual, "new" or very rare, none of which is, technically, true. That might seems unusual to folks who've only grown standard green cucumbers and the orange-fleshed muskmelons we Americans refer to, erroneously, as cantaloupes. However, the banana melons are pretty common in many countries and many cultures. If you grow Armenian cucumbers, they aren't new to you---since they look and grow about the same. The banana melons/banana cantaloupes are rare only in the sense that they are not well-known to the public at large, though are fairly well-known to avid gardeners. Seed of the banana melons/banana cantaloupes have been available commercially in the USA since around the 1880s so they really aren't new either.

    I'm not convinced the banana melons are very different at all from standard Armenian cucumbers anyhow, and suspect they just are a variant of the pale green Armenian cucumber. I leave some Armenian cucumbers on the vine a very long time and let them get big before I pick them and slice them open and feed them to the chickens, cottontail rabbits and deer. Their flesh is still partly green (near the rind) when I harvest them, but closer to the seed cavity the flesh is indeed already turning the same pale salmon you see with banana melons, which isn't surprising since both of them are Cucumis melo.

    I've never left an Armenian cucumber on the vine long enough for its color to change from pale green to anything else (except the green color gets lighter and lighter the longer I leave them on the vine) because there's too many hungry animals in August that I am trying to keep fed. If left on the vine long enough, though, I think the Armenian cucumber's skin would turn yellow. The two could be merely closely related or the banana melon could have originated from an Armenian cucumber but had a mutation that gave it a sweet flavor with hints of banana and/or pineapple.

    Dawn

  • fatboyreptiles
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well now thats the kind of info I am talking about thank you Dawn and my name Is actually Mike and we live in Guthrie so do not think I fell into the cloudy side but we did not plant them in a full sun location but will next year....

  • soonergrandmom
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I came home last weekend to a huge crop of slicing cucumbers growing on a trellis over a walkway in what is left of my garden. Something hit me in the back of the head while I was picking them, and I turned to find an Armenian cucumber about the length of a baseball bat and in the middle was about twice as big around as a bat. That's the first time I had ever let one trow that long. That sucker was heavy. LOL

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Mike, I hope when you finally get a big yellow banana melon to taste that you'll come back here and let us know how it tastes! I grew banana melon about 13-14 years ago and it didn't do well for me. We were in tremendous drought here at the time and had barely done any soil improvement yet, so it likely wasn't the plant's fault--it was just the growing conditions at that time.

    To achieve their full, rich and sweet flavor, melons really do need full sun and lots of heat. I always plant the Armenian cukes and the muskmelons in an area where they get full sun from sunrise until sunset. Well, at least that is what I do in general with most melons but not with watermelons. Because watermelons tend to sunburn pretty easily in July and August, I like to inter-plant them with taller plants that will help shade the fruit. Some years I plant watermelons with okra and let the okra plants help shade the watermelon fruit. This year I planted the melons with flowers instead---cosmos and cleome--- and it was a great combination even though the August heat has been brutal on the cleomes. They look pretty bad now so I cut them back hard last week. The melons growing with them only have one fruit left ripening so after it is done I'll just yank out the melon plants.

    We are in moderate drought here south of Marietta and an area of severe drought east of us is creeping ever closer, so clearly much of the rain has missed us too. I've had to water the garden a lot but since melons love heat, they've been ridiculously happy. We've been completely overrun with melons for about 6 weeks now. I think I've been harvesting about 5-7 watermelons a week throughout most of August, and several Armenian cucumbers a day. There's only a handful of each left now, but that is not surprising since Autumn is approaching. Now I am beginning to harvest lots of winter squash.

    Our muskmelon and cucumbers are about done for this year but produced great this year, and our Armenian cucumbers (which actually are melons similar to your banana melon but have a cucumber-like flavor and texture if picked before they get too large) have done very well but now they too are slowing down as well. They all have produced better than expected despite the drought but the plants don't produce endlessly. Seems like they produce themselves to death in a good year.

    Carol, When an Armenian cuke gets that big before I can find it and harvest it, I just cut it in half and put it on the ground for the chickens. They love eating them. If the chickens leave any bit uneaten, the squirrels quickly finish them off.

    Our Armenian cucumbers out back still have 10-12 fruit on them but are hot, tired and running out of steam. After I harvest those last few fruit, I'll yank the vines down. It has been a hot and dry July and August here and it shows. I have watered enough to keep the plants alive and producing but not enough to keep them as green and lush as they usually are.

    I've turned my attention more towards southern peas and jalapeños lately as they are at the peak production now. I will miss having a mini-watermelon to eat every day, but will just eat more peas and peppers instead. And, speaking of peppers, in this oddly hot and dry weather, we nevertheless are having the best poblano pepper year ever. I caged the 2 poblano pepper plants when I planted them and they are huge monsters covered in peppers and blooms. We likely will harvest more poblano peppers this year than in all the previous years combined. Not only that, but instead of being slow to produce, they had produced red, ripe poblanos by early July. I don't know why they have done so much better this year. It defies logic. Maybe it was all the rain that fell from mid-May to mid-June.

    Well, I need to get off the computer and get outside so I can harvest Armenian cukes, watermelons, peppers, southern peas, tomatoes and okra before it gets too hot. Our temperatures have been dropping into the upper 60s at night but then skyrocket quickly once the sun comes up.

    Dawn

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