My Second Attempt at Growing Sugar Kiss and Honey Kiss Melons

A couple of years ago my mom turned me onto the “sugar kiss” and “honey kiss” melons that would occasionally show up in our local wal-mart and sams club produce sections. These melons strongly resemble a canteloupe –however, they are 10x sweeter than you can imagine and their texture is completely different.

I sat down last season and dried some seeds from a few melons we picked up in the store and tried really hard to get them started indoors and transplant them outside, for whatever reason the seeds were hard to germinate and get up indoors and they didn’t transfer outside very well at all (especially into my raised bed garden 1.0).

Fast forward to this season and I’ve had a very good start to the season w/ these kiss melons (started indoors and transferred outdoors successfully). See photos below…

Background information on the kiss melons:

A melon so sweet it’s called “Sugar Kiss” — and that’s no exaggeration. The cotton candy of melons, the soft orange center will melt on your tongue, bursting with rich, cantaloupe flavor. … For over 25 years, the Russell family has produced their juicy, flavor-bursting specialty melons throughout Arizona and California. (source)

Sugar Kiss is the sweetest member of the “Kiss” family of melons. This melon packs a punch of flavor. The soft meat melts in your mouth, dissolving like sugar on the tongue. An incredible enjoyable eating experience. With a texture reminiscent of a Crenshaw, the Sugar Kiss has unsurpassed flavor. (source)

The honey kiss melon is a hybrid of the Hami melon variety, which originated in Hami Prefecture in eastern Xinjiang, China, more than 700 years ago. … The sugar kiss melon got its name because it is so sweet and also because of the way sugar melts on your tongue, which you get a similar feeling when you eat this melon. (source)

Also, I recently ran across a video of someone that had actually managed to grow the melon in their garden, check it out:

Is it possible to grow Sugar Kiss or Honey Kiss Melons from saved seed?

I have mentioned my intentions of saving seed from these melons and trying to grow them myself amongst other gardeners online in a discussion board setting and got various opinions as to whether these melons would even produce since they are F1 hybrids…

Here’s some background on F1 Hybrids: F1 hybrid seeds refers to the selective breeding of a plant by cross pollinating two different parent plants. In genetics, the term is an abbreviation for Filial 1 – literally “first children.” It is sometimes written as F1, but the terms mean the same. Hybridization has been around for a while now. (source) However, any seed produced by F1 plants is genetically unstable and cannot be saved for use in following years. … Gardeners who use hybrid plant varieties must purchase new seed every year. Hybrid seeds can be stabilized, becoming open-pollinated varieties, by growing, selecting, and saving the seed over many years. (source)

Update: The plants are not sterile…

One of the biggest concerns I had when dealing w/ a F1 Hybrid was that I might have a huge plant that takes up a lot of space but doesn’t make fruit because it’s sterile, well I can rule that out…