Garden Q&A: Advice on planting, harvesting cantaloupe

I want to plant cantaloupe this spring in my garden. When do I plant the seeds and how many days to harvest? Also what is the best way to determine when a cantaloupe is ready for harvest?

In Northeast Florida, plant seeds in March or April. Space them 24 to 36 inches apart. Days to harvest are between 65 to 90 days.

A cantaloupe is ready to harvest when the stem easily separates from the fruit. To avoid over-ripening, harvest cantaloupes before they naturally separate from the vine.

The best way to check maturity of cantaloupes is to place your thumb beside the stem and gently apply pressure to the side. If the stem separates easily, the cantaloupe is ripe.

The outside of the cantaloupe should be well netted (the part that looks like a net on the outside) with a golden color under the netting.

There may be some bleaching on the rind where the melon lay against the ground. This is fine and will not affect the flavor or ripeness.

There should be no stem left and a slight indentation where the stem had been. Avoid melon that has dull green coloration.

I know that vegetables should be planted in different areas of the garden each year. Is it the same for annuals?

Crop rotation - planting a particular plant in a different location each year - is a good gardening practice. When you plant the same type of plant year after year in the same spot, diseases and insect problems often develop. To avoid problems, it's wise to grow something different periodically to break the pest cycle.

On the other hand, if you're having success with a certain variety of flower, you could continue to grow it until a problem occurs, then switch to something else.

Last week I saw an ad in the newspaper for a resurrection plant. Can you tell me something about the plant?

There are several plants known as resurrection plants, but the one you saw advertised is more than likely Selaginella lepidophylla. This plant is also known as Rose of Jericho and Siempre Viva (meaning Everlasting).

Found from Texas and Arizona south to El Salvador, the resurrection plant is a desert inhabitant. Growing from rock outcroppings or in dry soil, its close neighbors would be mostly cacti and other arid-loving species.

When the soil is moist after infrequent rains, a resurrection plant absorbs water and grows rapidly, producing a flat rosette of scaly stems up to 1 foot across. As the soil dries, it cannot store water like its succulent neighbors, so it folds up its stems into a tight ball as it desiccates and goes into a state of dormancy.

The folded plant has a limited surface area, and what little internal moisture is present is conserved. All metabolic functions are reduced to a bare minimum, and it appears to be dead.

The plant can remain in this dormant condition for years. When the rains return, the plant's cells rehydrate. The stems unfold, metabolism increases and growth resumes. Even dead resurrection plants will unfold if given water, since rehydrated cells expand even if there is no living protoplasm in them.

The resurrection plant's ability to seemingly return from the dead certainly justifies its common name and has led to its use as a novelty plant. Collected from the wild in the Southwest United States and Mexico, it is sold to tourists and exported worldwide.

Tom Bruton is a master gardener with the Duval County Extension Service and the University of Florida/IFAS.