ISSUE 42, MELONS, Part 7: Moon & Stars Watermelon
Moon and Stars Watermelon
Rocky Ford, Colorado, since the 1880s has been one of the hotbeds of melon breeding and growing in the United States. It came to national fame for the “Rocky Ford Cantaloupe,” for many the standard for marketability in the first half of the 20th century. Yet it also produced in the early 1920s the watermelon that has become the most recognized and popular heirloom watermelon, the Moon and Stars. The oval to round yellow splotched, green skinned melon has maximum attention magnetism. The myth is that it was an old Amish variety, but in truth it was some sort of cross between a large green skinned picnic melon and a roundish, thin skinned melon. In the first two decades of the twentieth century there were more watermelon varieties grown in close proximity in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado than any place else in the United States. Dr. Delavan V. Burrell of Rocky Ford, a breeder of curcurbits—cantaloupes, watermelons, and cucumbers—had farmers in the region growing 28 different varieties of watermelon for seed in the 1910s judging by his 1915 D V Burrell Seed Catalog. Maintaining the distance protocols for true seed could be difficult. At any rate, one of the farmers found the yellow mottled green melon and rather than hand it over to one of the five melon seed producers in Rocky Ford, collected Peter Henderson Seed Company’s bounty for new and unusual vegetables. It appeared in Henderson’s 1924’s Everything for the Garden catalog under the name “Sun, Moon and Stars Watermelon.” Here is what Henderson said of the new watermelon: “This new watermelon, named by its originator ‘Sun, Moon and stars,’ is “something new under the sun]. The circles and stars imprinted on its rind are certainly an extraordinary variation from the usual type, and they have persisted for so long a period as to really make Sun, Moon and Stars a new variety. Seeds were sent to us originally by a practiced melon grower of Rock Ford, Colorado, who fixed the type, and named it. The rind which is very thin, is medium green in color, with an obscure dark stripe, and conspicuously marked with cream-colored circles and star-shaped spots, both large and small” (47).
The Sun, Moon, and Stars Watermelon remained a fixture in western and Midwestern seed catalogs until 1942. The Rocky Mountain Seed Company’s Perfegro Catalog of 1942 was the last American catalog to offer the melon, labeling it a novelty melon and supplying the not-too-ringing endorsement, “the edible qualities are about average.” It’s sounds as though the novelty had worn out. What was the average for western growers in the interwar period? All of the major watermelon seedsmen-farmers of the Arkansas Valley in Colorado (A W Creager of Ebert Seeds, R. H. James, and Dr. Delavan V. Burrell) grew Kleckley Sweet watermelons as their main crop and were intensively concerned with its improvement. This dark green picnic melon had become a standard for size, sweetness, and seediness. Burrell also worked improving two other oblong green picnic melons: the Tom Watson and the Alabama Sweet. Among the multitude of lines of watermelons were the mottled Early Fordhock and the thin-rind, roundish Hungarian Honey. These may have been involved in the crosses that produced the Sun, Moon and Stars.
The original Sun, Moon and Stars watermelon had red flesh, brown seeds, and ripened I 88 days. The foliage shared the splotching with the watermelon’s rind (a trait found in other cucurbits, including the Dutch Fork Pumpkin). After 1942 the variety survived solely by the saving of seeds by individual farmers. When the Seed Savers Exchange organized in 1975 it drew up a list of lost varieties of vegetables they wished to find. One of the original founders, Kent Whaley took up the cause of the Sun, Moon, and Stars Watermelon. A 1977 television interview in Missouri triggered a letter from gardener Merle Van Doren, who indicated he grew the “Moon and Stars.” His seed provided the foundation for the revived stock of the watermelon; other strains soon surfaced. A yellow-fleshed version of the revived “Moon and Stars” watermelon is now available as well as the red.
The Moon and Stars Watermelon has collected a fair amount of mythical baggage around it. Stories contradict each other speaking of Russian origin, Amish origin, Cherokee origin. The fanciful appearance of the melon has a way of triggering the imaginations of growers. On some level the idea that the melon emerged at one of the most active centers of melon development in the United States in the early 20th century doesn’t quite suit the wishes of seed savers and growers. Not every worthy item in the garden was a traditional landrace, or the creation of farmers and plain folks.
The melons can range from twenty to fifty pounds depending on the growing conditions. Like the Kleckley and Alabama Sweet it has a thick rind ideal for making watermelon pickles. While somewhat vulnerable to viral diseases, it has enough genetic variety to adapt to local conditions, and if one is careful in selecting seed, three to four years of planting should provide a productive and healthy field of watermelons.