CANTALOUP CULTURE 
points, we feel that the cantaloup in- 
dustry will be on a more stable footing. 
In the first place the large acreage for 
an individual grower should be 
discouraged, except in the special canta- 
loupe growing districts where growers 
have had experience in handling large 
acreages. If a large acreage is required 
to make carload shipments, it would be 
best to have an aggregation of a large 
number of small acreages handled by in- 
dividuals working in co-operation. 
Specialized cantaloup growing has been 
made a success in a few localities by a 
large number of growers, but has been 
attended with ups and downs, of over- 
production and glutted markets. But there 
is a great opportunity for a few growers 
in a great many localities to specialize 
in cantaloupes, to work up a fancy trade, 
and to study to cater to that trade and 
supply them with only the best, that will 
result in success where now only indif- 
ferent results are secured. The grower 
who considers only the producing side 
of the industry has not measured one- 
half of the question, for marketing to a 
profit is the biggest side. 
The Importance of Good Seed 
It is often argued that seed saved from 
over-ripe cantaloupes are just as good 
for seed, which on first thought might 
seem true, but why is a cantaloup over- 
ripe, when the fields have been picked 
over twice each day as they should be? 
It is true it may have been overlooked, 
but more probably the majority of ‘“‘over- 
ripes” are so because there is an inherent 
weakness toward rapid ripening, in real- 
ity a poor keeping quality; hence if we 
plant seed saved from over-ripe canta- 
loupes that are culled from where the 
bulk of the cantaloupes are marketed, 
we are propagating just the traits that 
we do not want in our cantaloupes for 
market. 
Seed breeding means more than the 
selection of seed from an average crop; 
that would tend only to produce average 
results. 
The same laws that govern the breed- 
ing of animals also control the improve- 
739 
ment of plants. Any fair-minded man 
will acknowledge that thoroughbred ani- 
mals are more profitable than scrubs, or 
even average stock, and the same is true 
of plants. But we must get the true con- 
ception of seed selection——not the idea of 
the uninformed farmer who, with his 
wife spent their evenings for many days 
selecting seed corn from a lot of shelled 
corn that he had purchased for feed. 
The man who selects his cantaloupe 
seed at the packing shed is almost as 
far wrong, for the plant that produced 
the seed has not been considered. 
Nature makes selections that the grower 
may often overlook: for instance, cool 
nights and a short season will act as a 
natural selection to develop the early ma- 
turing types, hence the seed from the 
arid region in high altitudes has proven 
to be superior to seed growing in the 
humid sections, both for vigor and early 
maturity. The big cantaloup growers 
from California and the Southern states 
realize this, for they look to Rocky Ford 
each year for their cantaloup seed, and 
all testify that they get earlier and more 
uniform cantaloupes from the Rocky Ford 
grown seed. 
Yet because cantaloupes from Colorado 
are the last to appear on the markets, 
some might suppose that the seed from 
there would be late in maturing, when 
in fact the very opposite is true. 
Some Points That Seeds Will Not 
Overcome 
Poor results are often attributed to 
poor seed, which is doubtless often the 
case, but there is evidence to show that 
complaints about seed may sometimes be 
made when the trouble is due to other 
causes: for instance, two fields may be 
planted with the same stock of seed, but 
having different soil fertility, or cultural 
care, may show widely different results 
in yield, size and uniformity of the crop. 
As for example, a grower in Texas 
who complained that certain seed pro- 
duced too many “jumbo” sizes, while from 
Southwest Arkansas another complaint 
from the same strain of seed was to the 
effect that the cantaloupes were running 
too small, yet this grower admitted that 
