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Your local market probably carries only honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon, but it's the heirloom melons of the world that contain both remarkable succulence and the critical germ plasm that may ward off future plant diseases. Amy Goldman's tribute to the magnificent family of melons, Melons for the Passionate Grower is both a celebration of the rich gifts of these fruits and a cautionary tale of how many of these treats nearly went extinct.
Before you get too caught up in the gorgeous photos and fascinating histories of these gems, note the seed company list at the end of the book--you can try to grow all the plants you read about. The introductory section includes detailed instructions on hand pollination, ripening, and a few recipes like watermelon salad with onion, pepper, oil, and vinegar in addition to the sweet melon.
The pages that fall in the middle are mini temples devoted to individual melons. Often romantic histories are included next to the glossy photos--who can resist tales of the Hungarian noble who wrapped her beloved sweet melons in her furs? With varieties like the slender, crunchy Snake and the astonishingly sweet Bidwell Casaba, learning about these glorious fruits will keep you fascinated for the rest of your gardening days. --Jill Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
There's more to the world of melons than just the cantaloupe and honeydew, but this may not be true for long: many varieties are "on the brink of extinction," according to cultivator and collector Goldman. This handsome volume documents unusual types of melon like the Collective Farm Woman (originally from Ukraine) and the serpent-shaped Snake melon with lavish color photos and playful descriptions. Goldman also instructs readers on how to pollinate, grow and harvest these plants; includes a list of commercial sources; and throws in a few recipes and plenty of trivia ("the Chinese grow more watermelons than anyone else but... they eat the seeds and often discard the melons"). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Goldman is an acclaimed gardener with a special interest in promoting and preserving heirloom varieties, non-hybrids whose seeds have been saved and handed down from one generation to the next. In Melons, she writes about seed-saving and preservation, growing, pollination, harvesting, and how to determine when a melon is ripe. She even includes several recipes. The heart of the book, however, consists of descriptions and illustrations of the melons themselves: Charentais, Emerald Gem, Santa Claus, Collective Farm Woman, Cob, Queen Anne's Pocket Melon, Blacktail Mountain (watermelon), and nearly 100 others. The many outstanding color photos are by photographer Schrager, whose other works include The Bird Hand Book. Browsers enticed by the eye-catching photos should also enjoy reading about melon history and lore, while serious gardeners will be motivated to try their luck at growing some of these exotic and nearly forgotten heirlooms. A resource list identifies sources for purchasing seeds of many of the melons described. Recommended for public libraries and for horticultural collections in academic and special libraries. (Index not seen.) William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., AmesCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Melons figure rarely in cooking, since most of them are eaten raw with little garnishing. Americans adore their watermelons, and they frequently consume honeydew melons as part of mixed-fruit plates. But if Goldman has her way, the American palate will soon learn what the rest of the world already seems to know: melons exist in dozens of varieties and are among the premier gastronomic delights. In Melons: A Passionate Grower's Guide, Goldman outlines her search for uncommon, heirloom varieties of melons that have threatened to disappear into banal supermarket hybrids. These distinctive melons, illustrated in full-color photographs, also bear singular names such as Noir Des Carmes, Hero of Lockinge, and Petit Gris de Rennes. Goldman describes this last one's merits so voluptuously that any gourmet who's not tasted it will spend the summer searching for one. Goldman offers advice on picking a market's best, perfectly ripe melons and notes the exacting Japanese have turned to MRI technology to find their prime specimens at their peak ripeness. The uninitiated also learn the differences between cantaloupes and muskmelons. A few recipes guide cooks to showing off melons' best characteristics. Goldman provides an exhaustive list of sources for seeds and a bibliography to help her readers locate more melon lore. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Town & Country
"Filled with fascinating historical facts, practical growing and buying information...Goldman's book has made melons my own new obsession."
New York Times Book Review
"...a stunning portfolio of 100 heirloom melons...the rarest of garden books, the kind that seems utterly complete and completely useful."
Book Description
This year's heirloom tomato is a melon! Acclaimed gardener Amy Goldman, known to viewers of Martha Stewart and PBS, is a dedicated seed saver working to preserve fast-disappearing varieties of heirloom melons. Her book, Melons for the Passionate Grower, is a celebration of the speckled, bumpy, oh-so-sweet world of the melon--from Minnesota Midget and Georgia Rattlesnake to Ali Baba and Sweet Siberian. Here she profiles more than one hundred varieties, each showcased in a full-color photographic still life recalling eighteenth- and nineteenth-century botanical paintings and engravings. Goldman also offers expert advice on cultivating and selecting your own melons, as well as the rudiments of seed saving.
About the Author
Amy Goldman, a self-described "melon maniac with a mission," works to preserve the agricultural heritage and genetic diversity of the world's fruits and vegetables. She has written for Garden Design magazine and has been profiled in publications including Martha Stewart Living, Country Living Gardener, and Organic Gardening. Victor Schrager's photography has been featured in exhibitions across the country. He is the photographer for Bird Hand Book (2001) and Artisan's fall 2002 title Anatomy of a Dish.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Garden of Delights Entering the melon patch is like walking into a candy store. It's the dessert course, only better. Easy to grow, melons gratify instantly, producing luscious fruit in one season. The taste of melons at their peak, oozing honey, is incomparable, as is the air, redolent with muskmelon, on an August night. The Christmas, an heirloom or old-fashioned melon, was my first melon love. For weeks I had waited for the fruit to ripen, and one morning it was ready, lolling in the garden like some outlandish hot air balloon, its hard rind covered with vivid yellow and green streaks. I dropped to my knees and cut it open to taste its delightful green flesh. Since then I've formed passionate relationships with a number of other melons. I'm devoted to Cob, Fordhook Gem, Petit Gris de Rennes, Prescott Fond Blanc, Snake . . . and the list goes on. In May or June, scores of melon plants spring up in my garden, blanketed by tents of spun polyester cloth atop black plastic mulch. They are protected from the elements by diatomaceous earth (an organic pest control), a spritz, scores of heirloom BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), and TLC (tender loving care). What more can I do but pray for sun? After the floodwaters of June recede and the first hatch of insect pests has passed, I remove their cocoons and let the melons sprawl, at ease, until the garden becomes a verdant sea of vines bearing fruit. The green bowling balls that pass for watermelons or the melons posing as cantaloupes in grocery stores across America don't begin to describe the world of melons. We've all seen melons that are netted, wrinkled, striped, or ribbed; but there are melons with warts, freckles, and stars; melons that look like snakes or bananas; others that smell or taste like pineapple, mango, peach, or perfume. These are extraordinary heirlooms. Heirloom fruits and vegetables are treasures from the past, carefully tended and preserved by generations of farmers and gardeners. They are beloved for their looks and their taste. I can't count the number of times someone has tasted one of my melons for the first time and said, "This brings back memories of my childhood," or "I'm in ecstasy." At a taste test of my melons at the Union Square Greenmarket, there was almost a stampede. Until they tasted heirlooms, the crowd didn't know what they were missing. But the delight of melons that taste sublime is only one reason to grow heirloom fruits and vegetables. The other is because we need their germplasm. It's their genes that will help us fend off the potato famines and corn blights of the future. Without their genetic diversity, we will be prey to ever-more virulent pests and diseases. Unfortunately, countless heirloom varieties are threatened with extinction, and thousands have already been lost. During the consolidation within the seed industry over the past twenty-five years, Mom and Pop operations were gobbled up by giants. A polite term for what happened is deaccessioning, and like paintings removed from galleries in museums to make room for new acquisitions, heirloom fruits and vegetables—also things of beauty—were sent to dry dock and oblivion, leaving only faint tracings of their integrity behind. Filling the void left by heirlooms' departure was easy: Industry makes far more money from hybrids. The bottom line is that first-generation (F1) hybrids are proprietary inbreds that yield unreliable seed. Heirloom seed, on the other hand, breeds true, producing offspring like its parents. You're taking potluck when you save seeds from hybrids, and you don't want to rely on chance, you need to ante up for fresh seed. Clever these seed companies: disposable seeds create dependency and repeat business. The industry promotes hybrids whether they're genuinely better or not. When it comes to melons, even plant breeders admit that hybrids have nothing over heirlooms. They're not bigger, better, or more improved. The development of seedless, or triploid, watermelon seems to be the major "advantage." But breeding the life out of a melon is not exactly a desirable trait. While supermarkets devote whole aisles to hybrids, heirloom varieties are hard to find, and they are becoming scarcer by the day. Still, much remains of our vanishing vegetable heritage, and through the largesse of Kent Whealy and the Seed Savers Exchange, one can plant a garden where the extraordinary is ordinary. Kent gives us the seeds of special things to eat, the seeds of yesteryear. If we sow and grow those seeds, we are nourished; and if in the end we harvest more seed, we ensure next year's bounty. This is the natural history of agriculture, the way our grandparents and great-grandparents fed themselves. But it's not the way we commonly feed ourselves today. Kent and his wife, Diane, have been working together for twenty-five years to help home gardeners and orchardists keep heirlooms alive. The Seed Savers Exchange, in Decorah, Iowa, is a nonprofit membership organization that collects heirloom seeds, maintains and grows them out in preservation gardens, and distributes the seed to others. Most of these old-time varieties are not native to North America, but became part of our common heritage when immigrants brought the seeds here, hidden in their suitcases or sewn into their dresses or hatbands. These precious portable possessions spelled breakfast, lunch, or dinner and the comforts of home in an uncertain New World. Kent Whealy gave me the chance to play a small part in agricultural history when he sent me two cardboard boxes of melon seed by overnight mail. Opening them, I realized I had in my hands a gift of vast magnitude, an irreplaceable wonder, the seeds of yesterday. Kent had only a few seeds of some varieties left, and he wouldn't have given them to me if he felt I couldn't handle them. Still, I was afraid something would go wrong and even had a nightmare about the theft of plants from my garden. I've since regained my composure and harvested hundreds of melons from Kent's seed. This book attempts to portray them in all their glory.
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