Cantaloupe: The Nutrition Bomb In Your Survival Garden

It’s small, it’s easy to grow, it’s delicious, and it’s absolutely loaded with good stuff. We’re talking about the lowly cantaloupe – a veritable high-yield bomb of nutrient-rich goodness. If you’re building a survival garden, or just trying to knock a few bucks off that grocery bill, get ahold of some cantaloupe seeds and grow yourself a crop of the tastiest little nutrition bombs you could ever imagine!

Cantaloupes are melons, of course, but they also belong to the squash family, which American Indians grouped with corn and beans as the “three sisters” of farming. All of these are excellent survival foods, and cross-pollinate very well. Beans are a wonderful source of protein, and corn – laden with natural sugars – can be fashioned into cakes, breads, and similar foods. Squash of all kinds are very vitamin-rich, and the cantaloupe fairly bursts at the seams with good stuff -- potassium, foliate, dietary fiber, B vitamins of several kinds. Like corn and beans, cantaloupe seeds are also quite easy to save and store.

Pick the fruit when it’s most ripe. The cantaloupe seeds will be fully mature, and can be extracted even as you and your family dine on the succulent outer fruit.

Ply the melon with a sharp knife, carefully scooping out the inner seed lining. Place the seed-bearing pulp into a bowl, removing by hand as much pulp as possible. After disposing of the pulp, add warm water to the bowl containing the cantaloupe seeds. Skim away seeds that float on top, since they won’t be of any use. Rinse the rest of the cantaloupe seeds once more to eliminate any remaining sugar and pulp and then place on a screen to dry. (Bacteria will ruin the seeds unless the pulp is completely gone during drying.) This process should take about three days.

Once the cantaloupe seeds are dried, place them in a bag identifying them and noting when they were harvested. They can then be placed into a freezer until the next planting season.

The same procedure can be employed to preserve other melon seeds, such as crenshaw, honeydew, and watermelon. All of these fruits are delicious and extremely healthy. Plant many varieties and if you find one that is particularly delicious, make a special effort to save as much of its seed as possible for the next year. It’s important to understand, however, that if you’re dealing with hybrids, such as the common F1 hybrid cantaloupe seeds, your second and third generation crops might not be quite as tasty as the first.

This may seem a bit labor-intensive, especially when it’s possible to buy cantaloupe seeds quite cheaply. But if you find a particularly good cantaloupe variety, you’ll be motivated to save as much of it as possible. It’s also important to remember that self-sufficiency means controlling as many of the variables as possible – and this includes a supply of seeds.