Almost forgot to put the link from the first thread I had about my 'lopes for those who may find this later and want to follow the whole progression. It's linked below...

~Angela

Here is a link that might be useful: Cantaloupes with first flowers

Congratulations on your new babies, Angela. Such a proud parent you are! But providing sex education when they are at such a tender age...well, I'm not to sure what to think about that.

Granny...

aka Grinny

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

Expecially such a promiscuous male! One male pollinating 5 females... don't let your kids see that!

Seriously, it's really easy to hand pollinate. Just pick a male and tickle the open flowers of the females. I do that every so often even on not fully open flowers and ones that are shriveling up. It can't hurt and I get tons of cukes that way. I'll do the same thing with my cantaloupe when I see female flowers eventually.

I'm glad you're in a climate where you can do late growing like this, I seriously doubt my canataloupe will survive to harvest!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

ROFL!!!! You two are hilarious! What's even funnier, is I did take one male and start pushing it to tickle the females... hahahaha

The little things that hold the pollen (not sure what they're called) were very far inside the flower. Even with pulling each flower petal off, it was still hard to get the pollen inside the female flowers and then I wasn't sure I was getting it in far enough. LOL

Should I use a paintbrush to do this? Where's Crystal, our girl that re- hand-pollinates daily? I knew I shouldn't have laughed at her.... now, I'm probably gonna be doing the same darn thing!!! How big do the fruit have to get to know that the pollinating "took"? Or, do I just wait for the bloom to fall off? LOL

~Angela

I didn't even see a stamin in mine. I just rubbed flower to flower and it worked like a charm. My guess is there is pollen on the flower too. I know it works great for cukes.

To add, reading this post made me go out past dusk and check. YAY! I've got females too. Two of them! I pollinated one of them since the flower was open. Well I pollinated both but doubt the other one was open enough to work. We're running out of time so I'm just hoping for one or two this year since I planted WAY late!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

WooooHooooooo! I was JUST about to ask you about your melons as well... seriously..... how weird to come here and see that our are coming along at just about the same pace! You're in 8b... hmmm... I would think that you'd have time?

Didn't EG mention that it was five weeks after the flower had been pollinated that we'd get ready to pick fruit?

~Angela

LOL! I am so glad you posted this because I didn't even know that my pumpkins and squash would get male and female flowers. Now I'm prepared to spend even more time out there doing some matchmaking! I inspected all of my flowers and no females yet - apologies to the male flowers that I had to handle to do so.

I have been out hand pollinating my corn though :) . They are probably tired and just want a break from my interference LOL.

Here is a link that might be useful: Crystabel's Garden

Congratulations! I don't know how many vines you have, but I would only let a couple of melons form on each one - then i'd snip the end of the vines. That way, most of the plant's energy will go into the existing fruit - and not into more vine growth. If not, it might take longer than 5 weeks for them to reach maturity. You'll also have to pinch all of the blooms coming off of the sides...it will just keep making blooms....

EG

Crystabel, I'm glad my thread was helpful! I sure hope I'm figuring out the hand-pollination thing. I saw two flowers the day after I did the deed that were all shriveled up... I think it's too soon to tell if the melons are growing, though, as that was just a couple days ago.... And, because of Sinfonian's suggestion that opening the flower early or late even worked for him and he got a lot of fruit, I'm doing that as well for those flowers that I somehow missed even though I'm studying every single flower I see on a daily basis... LOL

Thanks, EG! I think I have time so I'm going to let as many melons grow as they want to.... I'll be out there with blankets and tons of cover if any frost even thinks about coming my way! I want every melon these suckers will give! I've babied them, talked to them daily, and even pulled tons of weeds, too, since these aren't SFG style. :-(

~Angela

Well, the two shriveled up flowers are gone and the little melons associated with them are turning a yucky yellow. I wonder if that means that they're not gonna survive. They look terrible!

But, the good news is that I see one that is DEFINITELY getting bigger and it's still a nice, beautiful green color! hee he

AND guess what else? I saw a lone little helper out there this morning when I went to help my 'lopes get pollen exchanged. I didn't want to disturb the bee because he was REALLY busy trying to get to every single flower. Ooooh, I'm very excited that I have some help out there... I thought maybe I'd leave them alone on the hand-pollination today because of the bee, but this afternoon, I went out again to try to help the flowers that were covered with foliage since the bee couldn't get to those ones.

~Angela

Hi Angelady,

I know it's been almost two years, but I just found this thread that you started about your cantaloupe way back then. So... did you ever get some edible melons out of these vines? Were they same as the parent melon, or perhaps not because your parent melon was a hybrid?

I started a pretty similar experiment this year with seeds from a supermarket cantaloupe (I assume it was a hybrid, but I have no way of knowing). I'm curious to find out what happened to your cantaloupe, maybe it will give me a clue about the future of my plants. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing SUPERmarket Cantaloupe

Hi im having some trouble telling the difference between male flowers and female flowers, some of the flowers look a little lighter in color and are slightly bigger than others, this picture (although slightly blurry) shows two right next to eachother that have slight color and size difference,but i cant tell if there is a baby cantaloupe behind either of them, any help would be greatly appreciated.