Missouri Gold Melon

Until a few days ago, I was admiring my beautiful, green melon patch with lots of small and medium immature melons forming. After a few days of rain, I check on the patch this morning, and it is seriously infected with powdery mildew. I'm very frustrated and disappointed. I'm new to vegetable gardening (this is my 3rd year), and more new to growing melons (only my 2nd year), and they keep getting attacked by powdery mildew. Last year, no mildew until August. This year, June. St Louis is very humid in summer. I may have to go to a hybrid that is mildew resistant. Thankfully, I was able to talk to one of your master gardeners, who gave me help and guidance. I appreciate that.

This is a delicious and easy to grow melon. I trialed a few muskmelons this year and this one was a winner. Great flavor, perfect amount of sweetness. Grows easily in Missouri, which is no surprise given the name. Yield is about 2 per plant for me. The best part is this melon tells you when it's ripe by changing to a light yellow color on the rind.

I had high hopes for this "old-timer" but was very disappointed. While the vines grew long and the plants put out a lot of fruit (prob 3 per plant), every single melon I picked was complete mush inside. The outside would appear normal, with no appearance of any bug disturbance, but when cut open, the inside was very watery and almost foul smelling. The chickens liked them...I never tasted a one.

This melon is wonderful. I grew three vines in my garden area and have dozens of melons growing nicely. We started picking this week and have shared with friends and family. Sweet, yellow flesh, each melon so far has averaged 2-3lbs. This will be in my garden again next year.

We grew 15 melon types in 5 gallon containers last summer. This one was sampled by our family and my husband's work and got a thumbs up from all taste-testers with its strong muskmelon flavor. It took 28 days from the time it sprouted for it to flower and 84 days from sprouting to our first ripe melon. For those who might want to start early indoors, at 28 days from sprouting, the vine measured 27 inches long. This melon turns a beautiful whitish color a couple of days before it is able to slip easily. Ours had a very noticeable crack all the way around the stem when it was ripe. This was a beautiful melon to watch develop and had a really nice fragrance, too. Our melon weighed in at 2 pounds.