A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Cantaloupe blossoms

I've never grown cantaloupe before, but my vines are now about 3 feet long. I have lots of flowers, and have seen a good bit of bee activity, so I was puzzled as to why I still don't have fruit. I have looked and looked at the flowers, knowing they have male and female, and for the life of me I could not see a difference. So I figured I must be looking at them wrong. Then I found this site:
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/veggies/muskmelon1.html which says the first flowers are all male!!! No wonder! So I figured I would share the info, in case anyone besides me was wondering what the heck they were doing wrong!

hi val! I too am first year gardener, and was kinda wondering too why i didnt have any melons growing yet. But now i have 3 cantaloupes growing THEYRE SO CUTE !!! Theyre the size of a gum-ball. Cant wait to dig into em, i LOVE muskmellon. I was afraid due to my colder weather that we wouldnt have any bees around so i took it upon myself to hand pollinate them.

Good luck with this years crop!

Thanks Danno! Good luck to yours too!

I am considering hand pollinating. That's why I was looking for some female flowers. Hopefully I'll have some soon. I can't wait!!!

Thanx for the info I was wondering why I'm not seeing any fruit I guess now I know.

No worries...I recently posted regarding a similar problem of seeing both male and female flowers on my watermelon plants with no fruit. Basically, I realized that I just needed to let "nature take its course." I now have several little baby golf ball sized watermelon. I am watching for babies on my cantaloupe plants as well...

Yup, most curcurbits start putting out all male flowers first.

THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!!!!

(this is me running away from my computer now cuz all you women are going to attack it with virus's! LOL!!!!)

Not only that, but tomato viruses too !!!

Here is my baby Cantaloupe:



And here is my baby Watermelon:

Lookin good Pat.

Yeah, baby fruit! What we like to see!
They're very cute.

Update -- I have two baby cantaloupes now! Yeah!
The bees are still doing their thing, so there might even be more coming. They're growing in a container, so I don't know how big they'll get, but "personal size" would even be OK with me!

I got a very late start with mine...I just have baby plants!
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Hey, ya gotta start somewhere!

Last year these same seeds brought me some good fruit, so...let's hope I am not too late...

Thw way I did this year was buy a melon from the store and saved the seeds. I did see some baby melons a few weeks ago, but I have so many weeds it is hard to find them now.

I'd totally forgot I planted a few cantaloupes.....I was just down looking at them and they have flowers!