Vegetables mth Edible Fruits 153 



Planting and cultivating muskrmlons. 



Muskmelons may be treated like cucumbers, and 

 planted ' in paper pots, or veneer baskets, and then set 

 out in the field ; or the seed may be planted in the field. 

 The rows are made 6 feet apart (Plate VIII), and the hills 

 put from 3 to 6 feet apart in the row, according to the 

 variety. If the land is rich, or a liberal amount of fertilizer 

 has been used, the plants may be allowed to grow as close 

 as a foot in the row. From four to eight seeds are 

 dropped where a plant is desired, and when the vines be- 

 gin to run they should be thinned out to one or two in a 

 hill. 



The cultivation must be shallow, but kept up constantly, 

 and the weeds kept down. 



Marketing muskmelons. 



The smaller kinds are ready to pick when the stalk 

 begins to crack. If picked too green, they never ripen. 

 Rocky Ford melons are usually packed in standard crates 

 20 by 12 by 12 inches, holding 45 melons, and shipped 

 by a refrigerator car. They may be graded according to 

 the degree of netting, which has been found to correspond 

 with the quality of the fruit. 



Saving melon seed. 



No difficulty will arise from planting muskmelons and 

 watermelons in the same field. There is no danger of 

 hybridizing these two species, but seed should not be 

 saved where different varieties of muskmelons have been 

 planted in the same field. 



