Sweetest melon (brix)
 

Has anyone ever tried Hannah's Choice F1 melon (muskmelon/cantaloupe)? It's supposed to have a brix of 14%. That's beyond sweet (like world record worthy). What does it taste like?

If you know of a sweeter melon, feel free to let me know. I don't even know any watermelon to surpass that. The highest brix I know about in a watermelon is Treasure Chest F1, with a brix of 13.

I've grown Hannahs Choice the last 3 seasons and it definitely is a very sweet melon with excellent flavor. I would rank it right at the top for production and uniformity as well. The one downside is that some will crack if I get rain at harvest. I grow on plastic and limit water towards harvest, seems to help on brix. The sweetest melons are the ones with cracks and sometimes they will foam at the stem when they start to slip, be sure and try a foamer it will be the sweetest of the sweet. Another melon I was really impressed with last year was Crescent Moon. For a really sweet annas melon give San Juan a try, beautiful melon and the fragrance is heavenly.
Good luck,
Marcus

If they aren't grown properly or grown in well drained soil and starved of water at a certain time no melon will be sweet.
The same goes for many fruits and berries.
You may have a honking big crop but it wont be any better than the garbage they sell at the store.

These crops will NOT get sweeter off the vine anyone that tells you this is pulling you leg or just doesn't know better.

I cannot count how many times I have had road side sellers tell me to let it sit a few days and it will get sweeter.
Hog Wash I will tell them.

Why all this babble.
You cant buy sweetness in a variety it has to be grown properly and picked at the right time.

With musk melons and such the right time to pick is when the vine easily pops from the melon.
Watermelons are when the tendril next the the melon has completely dried up.
Or in both cases the vines have started to die off.


Worth

I am trying Sugar Cube this year, brix is also 14%. They are small melons......here is a description.

Small in size, big in taste! The deep orange, high quality flesh of these 2 pound, 4 inch, personal size melons has amazing flavor with a 14% Brix sweetness rating. Fruits keep well when refrigerated. The productive plants have an incomparable disease package that includes resistances to Powdery Mildew, Fusarium, Mosaic and Papaya Ring Apot Virus.

The disease package is what sold me, I have problems with cucurbits in general.

The best sickeningly sweet cantaloupes I ever grew came from seeds of a grocery store melon.
They were small but were fantastic.

Worth

Sorry I am not able to help you with Hannah's Choice, but I have also been trying to find that perfect cantaloupe/muskmelon. Of the 10-15 varieties I have tried, my current go to melon is Ananas Coquette from Burpee. Just before they are ready, they will turn color and I can test them if they will slip or not. With many of the other varieties, I had trouble catching them at their prime. I grow on raised rows with green plastic.

[QUOTE=Worth1;533895]The best sickeningly sweet cantaloupes I ever grew came from seeds of a grocery store melon.
They were small but were fantastic.

Worth[/QUOTE]

The sweetest melons I've ever eaten were also grown from grocery-store saved seed. The melons were also small and the plants were varyingly-productive. (I had saved the seed because the fruit I bought was single-serving sized, so the size was not a surprise.) I'm now a few years into trying to breed/select from the mixed up genetics that first appeared into a variety that does well in my short-season (MN) garden.

I wonder if the varieties for commercial use have been bred to extreme sugar levels to compensate for them never being allowed to ripen fully before harvest.

Thanks for the comments.

I like all the homegrown muskmelons I've had, high brix or not (although I like them grown with with certain soil amendments more, because it seems they seem so much healthier). I was curious what 14% brix actually tastes like. I mean, watermelon is very sweet with a much, much lower brix. That's got to taste surprising.

I don't feel 14 brix is that high. I've tasted many over that, some grown by myself. Good variety, sun and low water.

Brix mostly relates to intensity of taste, but to a point. A 10 brix tomato has amazing taste, a 10 brix squash is bland and goes to the chickens.

[QUOTE=Darren Abbey;533981]
I wonder if the varieties for commercial use have been bred to extreme sugar levels to compensate for them never being allowed to ripen fully before harvest.[/QUOTE]

They aren't doing a very good job of it at least not in where I live.

I haven't seen a good cantaloupe in the store in years.
Not being picky either.
All cantaloupes are good if you let them get ripe, they are just picked green for shipping.
They know and have trained the customer to except a poor quality product.
You couldn't have given this stuff to a hog farmer 50 years ago.

Worth

[QUOTE=Worth1;534015]All cantaloupes are good if you let them get ripe, they are just picked green for shipping. They know and have trained the customer to except a poor quality product. You couldn't have given this stuff to a hog farmer 50 years ago.[/QUOTE]

I often wonder when people tell me that they don't like muskmelons, if they are saying that they dislike ripe melons that are picked when they have turned yellow and slip from the vine, or if they are telling me that they don't like the poor quality product sold in grocery stores and served in restaurants.

Brix is an interesting concept, but it doesn't translate all that well to perception of sweetness for me... My sweetest tasting watermelons have yellow flesh. I suppose because they are missing a bitterness component associated with red color.

My sweetest tasting cucumbers have a brix of less than 3. But they are likewise missing a bitterness component.

[QUOTE]These crops will NOT get sweeter off the vine anyone that tells you this is pulling you leg or just doesn't know better.[/QUOTE]

Worth, I hate to break this to you, but there are melons that get sweeter off the vine. They are commonly identified as winter storage melons which taste kind of like cardboard when first picked, but after a few months storage sweeten up nicely. That said, I agree that the common muskmelon/canteloupe we grow in the south has to be grown right to be sweet and has to be picked at the peak of ripeness to be worth eating.

[QUOTE=Fusion_power;534142]Worth, I hate to break this to you, but there are melons that get sweeter off the vine. They are commonly identified as winter storage melons which taste kind of like cardboard when first picked, but after a few months storage sweeten up nicely. That said, I agree that the common muskmelon/canteloupe we grow in the south has to be grown right to be sweet and has to be picked at the peak of ripeness to be worth eating.[/QUOTE]


I know about the storage melons these aren't the one Bubba is pushing on the side of the road that he drove to the valley and bought direct from the farm.

Now the woman that sells watermelons on the side of the road north of me in a bikini now those are home grown sweet melons.:yes:

Worth

Geez, I hope she's using sunblock! LOL!

[QUOTE=Deborah;534147]Geez, I hope she's using sunblock! LOL![/QUOTE]
The last time I saw her she was in her early 20's I think her watermelon farmer father put her up to it.
It is way out in the country on a main highway by a store and she was selling them like hotcakes.:lol:


Worth

What on earth kind of a father would encourage his daughter that way? Not to mention how dangerous that could be.

[QUOTE=Deborah;534169]What on earth kind of a father would encourage his daughter that way? Not to mention how dangerous that could be.[/QUOTE]

An enterprising father.:lol:

I can assure you if anyone even came close to bothering that lady the parking lot would look like a porcupine so may guns would pop out of nowhere.
This is Texas country style.;)
We have bikini car washes too.:lol:

We dont take kindly to people here hurting our folks.8-)

Worth

Oh. Then with my youthful good looks and stunning figure I'd be OK? Good to know! :roll:

The best tasting cantaloupe I ever grew was Ambrosia. They were the best cantaloupe I ever tasted. Nothing else even came close.

I gave up on growing cantaloupes and zucchini because the caterpillars always won out.

I prefer Tuscan melons myself.

Worth

Worth, you were supposed to laff!

[QUOTE=Deborah;534184]Worth, you were supposed to laff![/QUOTE]

I didn't see the post until now.:lol:

OK, that's better...

[QUOTE=Fusion_power;534142]Worth, I hate to break this to you, but there are melons that get sweeter off the vine. They are commonly identified as winter storage melons which taste kind of like cardboard when first picked, but after a few months storage sweeten up nicely. That said, I agree that the common muskmelon/canteloupe we grow in the south has to be grown right to be sweet and has to be picked at the peak of ripeness to be worth eating.[/QUOTE]


Can you post a link or something to these melons I thought I had read about them some place but cant find it now.

How on earth do they do it?

Worth

De colgar, de invierno, invernizo, tendral ... a class of their own. You pick them slightly underipe and they ripen in storage. Then stay ripe for quite a while. Storage is 3-5 months.

Of course, you can let them rippen on the vine. There are some truly wonderful varieties among these. Some are really sweet.

Most are in real danger as you can find greenhouse melons and not everybody wants, or can have a bunch of melons hanging from the celing.

My mom told me about a method to ripen cantaloupes. She would leave them in the back window of her car for a couple of days. She said it works every time.

Best melon I ever tasted was called "Milky Way" and it was a hybrid honeydew melon. My mom had bought it from a mail order seed company(probably gurneys or burpee). I was very disappointed when the first melon picked tasted like cucumber. I had picked it too soon. I let the next one ripen, and it was amazing. The melon gets a nearly white with a hint of yellow on it when it is ripe. It has green flesh, and it is firm, and smooth, and sweet and flavorful. It seemed like they got about soccer ball size when they were ripe, and a vine put out probably a dozen of them. My hubby doesn't like honeydews, at all, but adored these.

I have been looking for more seeds, or another variety like them, for years. No luck so far. :bummer:

Carrie

Carrie, I'm going to try that the next time I buy a store cantaloupe.

[QUOTE=Deborah;534391]Carrie, I'm going to try that the next time I buy a store cantaloupe.[/QUOTE]


Guys it just doesn't work it will get soft but not sweet dont be disappointed.
No starch and it isn't going to get sweeter once picked.
This is why you let sweet potatoes cure for at least a month before you eat them.
Regular potatoes start to get sweet as they get older.

Here is the deal for the store if you walk into the melon department and you dont smell them then there aren't any there to bother with.
I smoke cigarettes and even I know if there is a good melon in the store.

One time I was about to walk in the door of HEB in Bastrop.
Before I got in I could smell cantaloupes.
I looked and they had Pecos Texas melons in the store never before or after did I see them.

Green flesh behind webbing bad melon.
Yellow to orange flesh with sweet smell good melon.
They cant sell them because they will rot on the way or at the store.
How did they fix this.
They just kept putting out crappy melons until everyone forgot what good one were.

Garbage fruit and melons are a big time pet peeve of mine I can get up on step about it.:lol:

Great discussion on brix, storage melons and other stuff. Thanks for the comments, everyone.

@Worth1 I've got Valencia Winter melon seeds from Baker Creek. It's another storage melon (up to four months, they say). I've heard it gets somewhat sweeter after months in storage, but I don't know if it tastes like cardboard when initially picked. I started a plant indoors early last year, and it had some interesting qualities (but something mechanical killed it while hardening off; so, this is an indoor review; I grew them a few feet long while indoors). Anyway, 1. the leaves smelled awesome (sweet) and different than the other melon leaves. 2. The leaves were smaller (and rounder, I think) with more space between nodes on the stems than my other melons.

So, why don't they just grow winter melons for the store. Then they can store them a good while, and sell them when they're a few months old (but still young enough to have a great shelf life)?