I have grown it fairly often, though maybe not since either 2010 or 2011 because it does not produce many melons compared to the space it takes up in the garden. Generally any given plant variety has to produce heavily in order to be a regular in my growing rotation. Most years it just produces 2 or 3 melons per plant, and in a drought year it might produce only 1. I choose, instead, to give garden space to cantaloupe and muskmelon varieties that produce more heavily. We love melons and must have a constant supply in summer. There's nothing worse than picking and eating a luscious melon and longing for more and then going out and checking the plant only to discover that it only has produced that one melon, or maybe it has produced that 1 but there's one (and only one) more that eventually will ripen. To me, melons like that, while yummy, are a waste of time, space, and the energy spent improving the soil in which they are grown. If a plant cannot produce more than 1 or 2 fruit per plant, I won't grow it.

Prescott Fond Blanc has been grown a very long time. The earliest mention I've ever seen of it in historical books dates back to about 1805-10. I know they've been grown in the USA since the mid-1850s. A melon that sticks around that long obviously has a lot of good qualities. Its very thick rind does protect it from varmints like possums that like to get into a garden and eat melons (probably as much for the water in them as for their flavor). It is more oblate in shape than many other melons, is whitish in color and deeply furrowed. It also is very warted, and is a rock melon, meaning the rind is thick and tough. It probably ties with Zatta (aka 'Ugly But Good') for the title of Ugliest Melon I've Ever Grown. Sometimes they are so ugly that it is hard to convince someone to try a taste of it if they saw it in its rind before you slice it up. (That's okay, as it leaves more melon for me.) It is very tasty, but so are many other melons. Charentais has similar heirloom melon flavor but produces more melons per plant. Since it is a true cantaloupe and not a muskmelon (in the USA we incorrectly call muskmelons by the name cantaloupe even though they are not cantaloupes), it does not form an abscission layer and slip off the vine when it is ready. That is important to remember because if you're waiting for it to slip off the vine, it never will, and by the time you realize it is beyond ripe and not slipping, it will be cracked and full of ants and still attached to the vine. It does have the most incredible aroma and the flavor is great, but not significantly better than many other heirloom and hybrid melons.

Regarding melons and squash bugs, I can have squash bugs crawling all over my squash plants all day long but they almost never, ever migrate to melon, pickle or gourd plants even when those plants are in the very next raised bed right beside the squash plants, so when I am choosing melon varieties I choose on the basis of flavor and productivity, not tolerance of squash bugs. I have never heard of any melon variety having better tolerance of squash bugs than other varieties so I don't know that it matters. To be clear, if you do not make any effort to control squash bugs, they can multiply to such numbers that they'll run out of squash plants to destroy and will move on to other members of the cucurbita family, but I've never let their population multiply and run rampant like that. What is more important, if you have a perpetual battle with cucumber beetles and squash bugs on your hands, is to search for varieties with better disease tolerance because the main way these bugs cause problems for susceptible plants is that they spread disease. In the case of the cantaloupes themselves, while the thick rind on Prescott Fond Blanc helps protect from insects or animals that chew on the rind, the bigger issue would be that squash bugs would spread disease to the foliage. I've never lost a melon plant of any kind, as far as I know, to squash vine borers. This summer I saw a squash vine borer moth twice just sitting on a muskmelon plant leaf, just sitting there on the leaves, resting apparently, but never had an SVB larvae get into the vine or the melons and we had melons all summer long.

I used to grow up to two dozen varieties of true cantaloupes, muskmelons and miscellaneous other melons every year, but in the last few drought years I've cut back to a mere handful of varieties in order to get the best production per square foot. Because we have abundant summer heat and dry weather, any melon I've grown in a typical summer or even in a drought summer has had fine flavor and has been worth growing. As far as I know, I've never lost a melon plant to squash bugs, though there are times I may have lost them to bacterial wilt spread by cucumber beetles or squash bugs. In a wet year (and I mean a really wet summer like 2007 or 2004), the melon plants grow like crazy but suffer from powdery mildew and the flavor is so poor (watered down by excess rainfall) that they really aren't even worth growing. Sometimes I can dehydrate them for many hours and suck out enough moisture that the flavor improves, but then you're left with very chewy, dry melon. Dehydrate melon is an acquired taste, not because the flavor is bad but because the texture is so different from fresh melons that they just seem odd.

The only way you'll know how it will grow for you is to just grow it. That's one reason I used to grow a couple dozen varieties per year. I wanted to try them all and compare how well they did in the same year when grown in the exact same conditions. It helped me figure out, over a period of 5-7 years, which varieties are worth growing and which ones are pretty much a waste of space. There are some that produce melons with exquisite flavor but which don't produce many melons per plant, and that's the group in which I'd place Prescott Fond Blanc. If I can grow Hale's Best Jumbo or Carole in that spot and get 4 to 8 melons per plant, and they both have excellent flavor, then why would I use that space for Precott Fond Blanc and risk getting only 1 melon or, at best, 2 or 3? I guess that sentence pretty much explains why you'll see Hale's Best Jumbo and Carole on my grow list every year and not Prescott Fond Blanc. If I had endless space and endless irrigation water at no cost, then I'd grow PFB every year too, but I don't.

I'm planning to grow more melons this year, back in the back garden where I've been growing cucumbers and Armenian cukes (and southern peas and Seminole pumpkins) the last couple of years, but I'm not sure Precott Fond Blanc will make the list. I'll be growing cucumbers in the front garden where I've been growing melons the last 2 years. It will be interesting to see how the cukes do out front, because they have performed much better out back in that newish garden space than they ever did in the front garden. I'm pretty sure Israel, Ha'ogen/Ogen, Noir de Carmes and Collective Farm Woman will join Charentais, Carole, Scrumptious and Hale's Best Jumbo in the back garden, but haven't decided on any other varieties yet. Regardless, I still choose on the basis of flavor and productivity, not thinking at all about squash bugs or SVBs when picking melon varieties. They just haven't been an issue for me on these types of plants. Luckily, I've never had pickle worms (knocking on wood and hoping I didn't just jinx myself) or it would make growing cucurbits a lot more challenging.

If SVBs and squash bugs do give your melon plants trouble, the best method to fight them would be to use lightweight floating row covers to exclude them and to just hand-pollinate them. It is a lot easier to hand-pollinate melons than squash or cukes because they don't produce all that many fruit per plant compared to cucumbers or summer squash so hand-pollinating doesn't take very much time.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

That helps a lot. Right now my feet and legs hurt so bad I've a vivid memory of how difficult it was to keep the squash bugs down. In short, I barely did. They overran the pumpkin vines killing many leaves with the disease, but the Old Timey kept on crawling everywhere, especially since I planted four. At one time I thought it was a goner because no leaves remained. This was when it was mature. 2 days later and new healthy leaves were sprouting. That pumpkin vine is a mutant monster! The bugs were initiated by my planting that darned pepo variety of gourd. Near that was the birdhouse gourd. I saw lots of SB on the birdhouse gourds, but no damage. It was the leaves.. even those soft fuzzy leaves were invaded by the buggers. it was slow, but they took it down with disease, but only after the gourds were mature.

I looked on the birdhouse gourd vines and also the OTCP vines and could see where larvae was. There were divots as if they had came out the side instead of continuing because of the woody vines. It was awful ... and my first. Can't imagine next year. I know the OTCP will likely survive and produce. Last year they cut production down, for sure, maybe 1/2 or greater. I still was happy. But that's OTCP, for ya.

You confirmed what was eating my pumpkins. I saw evidence of it today when out there working where a rotting pumpkin was half eaten. They know it's there. Now, I need to figure out how to keep those buggers out.

Do yourself a favor, Bon, and stop anticipating the difficulties. Are you trying to take all the fun out of growing crops in our wind-prone, pest-riddled, often-rain-starved state? I'd rather pretend there will be no difficulties at all and then tackle each one individually if it even appears at all in any given year. I had no squash vine borers at all in 2011 and no squash bugs either. Did I spend the whole gardening season wondering when they would show up? Heck no! I spent the whole gardening season worrying about the incredible heat and drought and worrying about wildfire consuming our property and garden. I also enjoyed having yellow squash and zucchini all summer long, or at least until I stopped watering the garden in July. I didn't give the non-existent squash bugs or borers much, if any, thought. I was just glad they left us alone that year. So, wait and see what happens---you might be able to grow any melon you want this year with no squash bug or squash vine borer (or pickle worm or cucumber beetle) issues whatsoever. Why borrow trouble, as my grandmother used to say, worrying about things that may not happen?

Seriously, I've been gardening for my whole life and grew up with a gardening family, including extended family that included a farmer and rancher or two, in a neighborhood full of veggie gardens, fruit trees, nut trees, chickens and even a few sheep in the 1960s/70s and never, ever once have I had squash bugs or squash vine borers attack cantaloupes, muskmelons or cucumbers in my garden or in the garden of anybody that I knew and cause significant damage. I'm not saying it doesn't happen because I've read and heard anecdotal reports from people who have had it happen to them. I'm just encouraging you to keep in mind that just because it does happen, that does not mean it will happen. You might be like me and never have the dreaded squash pests attack anything except squash, and occasionally maybe gourds.

For what it is worth, every C. moschata variety I've ever grown has performed just like OTCP, and I've grown at least a couple dozen different C. moschata varieties. They're all strong growers with great pest tolerance and disease tolerance and can handle surprisingly difficult drought conditions as well. I think that the fact that C. moschatas originated in tropical regions is what makes them such strong survivors. I've even seen them seemingly die back to the ground in drought spells after I stopped watering them (2011 is a case in point) only to have them rebound and regrow strongly as soon as rainfall returned in autumn, making me realize they actually hadn't died but merely had gone dormant. In a year when the heat just demolishes everything else (even my okra stopped producing in the 2011 heat), the C. moschatas just keep on keeping on. That's one reason I grow so many of them and love them so much. As long as you grow C. moschatas you'll feel like you're a great gardener who can overcome anything. They won't hardly die at all (until frost gets them) and you can't kill them. Furthermore, they produce heavily, and their fruit is yummy and stores well for months. I'm going to dig through my seed box and plant every C. moschata variety I find in it in 2015 because just talking about them reminds me how much I love them. They'll keep our garden green in August even if everything else falters in the heat. A few of the C. argyrosperma varieties (formerly C. mixta) also seem able to overcome squash bug and squash vine borer attacks, so don't be afraid to try some of those (green-striped cushaw, Japanese pie pumpkin, white cushaw/Jonathan, Hopi cushaw, orange-striped cushaw). Most years they perform about as well as the C. moschatas, but occasionally they do not.

Only fencing, and sturdy fencing with a gate that everybody always remembers to close and latch, will keep all the creatures out. Even then, you'll occasionally have something climb over or dig under the fence. It just happens. I try not to let it get to me when it happens. With all the time and money we have invested in fencing four separate garden plots, I do get aggravated that some creatures can circumvent the fences, but that's just real life in the real world. Hungry animals will spend their time 24/7 trying to get to your garden crops when they are hungry, and you cannot devote all your time 24/7 to keeping them out, so sometimes they win. That's just reality.

One lesson I had to learn over and over again after moving here before I really and truly believed it is this: every living things eats something and every living thing is eaten by something. You don't have to be rural to have possums, coons, skunks, moles, voles, field mice, birds, and hordes of hungry insects devouring your gardens and the fruits thereof. We had foxes and possums in our Ft. Worth neighborhood in the 1980s, and it was a very urban neighborhood that was developed in the 1940s so you would have thought all the wild creatures were long gone. They weren't.

It took me a long time to accept that I had to tolerate a certain amount of the garden being eaten and that there was nothing I could do about it. My compost pile gets raided several times daily by birds and beasts, particularly after dark. Sometimes I wonder how I get any compost at all since all the wild things come by daily and eat anything they find on the compost pile that they consider edible. I'd rather not have all the wild things lurking in the dark and eating things I really don't want them to eat, but I know that we live in an ecosystem that they are a part of and that they have to eat to survive. Fencing them out of the garden helps me stay calmer about all the hungry beasts, but it isn't practical to fence all my compost piles as it would make it harder for me to use them, so I just sigh and toss the food scraps on the compost pile knowing something will eat them during the night. When we first moved here, I thought that if I just used a trowel and buried fresh ingredients down deeper in the compost pile that the wild things wouldn't get them. Ha! They just dug down and found what I had buried and ate it. I just hope all those wild varmints are dropping their scat in our fields and forested area so at least they are putting some fertilizer back on the ground to make up for eating the ingredients from my compost pile. Sometimes the wild critters help you out by planting things in a place where you know you didn't plant them. Every now and then a pumpkin or cucumber or gourd plant will pop up 100 feet or 100 yards from where I grew them and I'll know that some animal had a good meal and then it planted some seeds afterwards. It's all good.

Finally, if you've let those squash bugs and squash vine borers get inside you head and you cannot get them out of there, resolve to grow one of the Hubbard squash varieties as a trap crop. It doesn't really matter which Hubbard you grow. Plant them as early as possible and as far away as possible from your real cucurbit crops. Pests flock to Hubbards like crazy. So, if you have the Hubbards out growing first and out in a wide open area where the pests cannot miss them, your pests (especially SVBs) will head straight to them and that makes it easy for you to monitor the Hubbards and kill all the pests you find there. Sometimes all you need is a trap crop to get the pests to congregate in one area where you then can attack the pests with any and all means at your disposal. Expect the Hubbards to die, but that's okay because you only planted them to serve as a trap crop.

If the squash pests ever start attacking my melons, you'll hear about it because I'll be screaming about it while immediately building a screened-in low tunnel to prevent that from ever happening again. As much as I love tomatoes and beans, potatoes and peppers, and everything else good that comes from the garden, there is something extra-special about home-grown watermelons, muskmelons, cantaloupes and other miscellaneous melons (Santa Claus, crenshaw, etc.). They have an undeniably sweet, rich, juicy flavor you never get from store-bought melons. If the pests ever declare open season on my melons, I'll fight back like a horde of angry hornets!

Dawn

You know, the funny thing about my worrying business is that the garden is the one thing that de-stresses me. Maybe it's not funny, but ironic. Since last year was my first serious all-year gardening adventure, I did notice that it's more helpful just to go out into the garden and "hang out" to see what needs to be done rather than constantly brainstorming things. I guess, sometimes, the best answer is just to 'suit up and show up'. This action, in itself, is a personal resolve to see things through while taking the stress out of things.

I'm like everyone here, probably, I'm missing my peaceful spots. I probably should just straighten up the garden shed and get the lights ready. Yeah. :)

I'm OK for now, but as soon as the seed orders start arriving I will be ready to plant. I have placed my Dixondale order and my Pinetree order. I will probably place a small Baker Creek order and try to use up some of my older seeds. Why do I always end up with so-o-o-o many? LOL

Carol,

I don't know why you always end up with so many, but I know why I end up with so many....because I want them, that's why. Then the challenge becomes where to plant them all, and always run out of space before I run out of seeds.

The only order I've done so far is a big one from SESE and it has arrived already, and then I have scribbled notes in my notebook indicating there are seeds I want/need to order from Victory Seeds, Baker Creek, SSE, Pinetree and Tomato Grower's Supply. If I can restrain myself and only order from those companies, I'll be doing really well. However, I bet I find something I "need" from Renee's, Botanical Interests, Wildflower Farm, and Willhite. Oh, and Dixondale of course.

Every time I sit down with at the computer to order seeds, something distracts me and I don't get it done. I figure with all the sleet, freezing rain, and other mud, muck and glop expected here for the next 2 or 3 days, I won't have anything else to do except to sit and order seeds (as long as we still have power). I have saved shopping carts with seeds in them so I just need to sit still for a little while and get it done.

Tim packed a bag and prepared to stay at work for 3 or 4 days and nights since the weather may prevent him from making that 90-mile drive home. So, see there....I already have all the meals for the next couple of days cooked (in case we lose power----I can reheat food on the grill or with the microwave running off the generator) so my plan is to sit here on the sofa, watching bowl games, with my laptop computer....ordering seeds. That's not the worst way to spend a snowy, sleety, rainy, cold and messy week. If the weather was warmer, I'd be out there digging compost into the soil, but it isn't, so I guess I will be forced to stay indoors and order seeds.

Dawn