I'm one of those people who ends up wanting everything marked "new" in the seed catalog, but I managed to restrain myself this year and only ordered five unusual melons. (That may sound like a lot, but the catalog had 16 varieties of Eastern and Asian melons that I'd never heard of before.)
This turned out to be my favorite. It's called Sakata's Sweet, and it originated in Japan. The description of fragrant, sweet, and crunchy was too good to pass up. And you can eat the peel!
Never having grown it before, I didn't really know what "ripe" looked like. I think it's actually a bit past this point - they get a yellowish tinge if you leave them longer. But it doesn't seem to matter much to the taste or texture.
One description said that they reach the size of a baseball, but they evidently grow about 50% larger than that in the Alabama heat.
They're green inside, and man oh man are they good. The taste is somewhat like a honeydew melon, only much sweeter, and very crisp.
The only problem we encountered was an extremely low germination rate. Out of about 21 seeds planted at three different times, we got one plant. (Still, it did better than the "Golden Sweet" melon, which produced no plants from the same number of seeds.)
Reading about another Asian variety, I was dismayed to learn that it only produces six - eight melons per plant. I hope that is not true of this type too, or else I've only got a couple more to look forward to.
The seeds came from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a nice company who offered to refund the money for seeds that didn't germinate.
-----
I almost forgot to mention, if any part of the melon seems a little bitter, a day or two in the fridge (after cutting it open) will cure that.
No comments:
Post a Comment