We picked our first Hale's Best Jumbo Cantaloupe yesterday, or rather it picked itself, and it's on the menu for breakfast today. Here it is in all it's glory ...doesn't it look incredible? And it smells as good as it looks too!
This year, we only have three cantaloupe plants growing. I would've preferred to have more (and a few different varieties too), but for one reason or another, we only have three. Luckily, the three plants that we have are doing really great and have at least 7 or 8 melons growing on them now in various states of maturity. The plants also have tons of flowers too, so I expect hope that we will have many more melons by the end of the season.
How a Cantaloupe Harvests Itself
Yesterday morning when we were walking around the garden and looking over everything (our favorite morning ritual in the summer!), my husband said he thought he could smell cantaloupe (one of the indicators that a melon is ripe and ready to be picked). We checked the most mature melon and decided it wasn't quite ready. Then it started to rain and we went inside.
Later in the day after the rains stopped, we went out to check the garden again and noticed that the most mature cantaloupe's rind had started to crack a bit. When I moved it so that we could look more closely, it just came right off the vine. There was no pulling or twisting ... it was just ready, I guess!
So, we're eating it for breakfast today and it is amazingly good.
ps - It is a good idea to hold back on the amount of water you give to cantaloupes as the fruit get close to being ripe (it makes the fruit sweeter). But if a mature cantaloupe gets a lot of water suddenly, it can make the fruit's rind start to crack!
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