Melon Project

RARE HEIRLOOMS FROM NINETEENTH C. FRANCE

This little project began last May, after purchasing a rare 1802 gardening book. It was then, when I discovered that in the early Nineteenth Century, the first glasshouses and 'stoves' in America were used not for flowers, but  mainly for fancy food crops - particularly the new 'Pine Apples' and citrus, that arrived home with sailors on their whaling ships. These plant crops, collected from exotic ports in the south seas, also included fancy table grapes from Europe,  that could ripen in the forced coal heated grapery for early winter table fruit, Muscadine grapes, nectarines and yes, melons.

 

I was inspired to consider optional uses for my glass greenhouse, which say unused for most of the summer, which brings me to my experiment in growing these melons. Not ordinary melons mind you, but vintage varieties that might have been grown in an 1802 greenhouse.  I chose to grow these period fruit for a few reasons, their authenticity- living legends that anyone can grow thanks to a growing group of seed savers who search the planet for vintage or heirloom varieties that might have been lost, their romance, because come on, what could be more desirable than tasting a fruit that is a clone of what Marie Antoinette may have enjoyed, but mostly, for the flavor, which had proven to be unbelievably delicious in a honey-meets-nectar-of-the-Gods, way.