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.

[Marcus1]

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

[Worth1]

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

[jillian]

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.

[Worth1]

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

Worth

[Rockandrollin]

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.

[Darren Abbey]

Originally Posted by Worth1

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

Worth

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.

[ilex]

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.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Darren Abbey

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.

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

[joseph]

Originally Posted by Worth1

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.

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.

[Fusion_power]

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

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.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

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.

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.

Worth

[Deborah]

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

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Deborah

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

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.


Worth