Your first step is going to be growing out some M&S seeds to reselect for purity, because variability is way too common in OP cucurbit seed stock. You also will need to choose between the round strain and the oblong one. I would spend a year or two reselecting out of an established strain from Southern Exposure or Sandhill Preservation before starting the breeding process.

weirdtrev, thats the perfect link. Thanx a lot! I'm going to try this for sure next year. I'll pay the extra money to get some cc seeds from a big 200+lb melon :)

planatus, I dont have a big farm or anything. I'll probably end up growing a dozen or so watermelon plants next year. I figured I'd try to basically make a carolina cross melon that has the m&s gene. Being dominant should make it easy to cross it back to carolina each year making it more and more pure carolina each year while retaining the cool gene. So I'm thinking that the variation should cut down very quickly to resemble an almost pure carolina with the spots. Basically, the uniformity should come on its own for the most part after a few years. It should be pretty easy even when I start getting only 50% seeds with the gene sense you can tell which ones have it so young. I'll just plant a bunch and only grow up the ones with the gene.

The only thing I still dont understand is how such a cool looking melon gene almost went extinct!! For anyone who doesn't know that reads this, apparently the variety was thought to be lost forever, and luckily years later it was found that someone had still been growing them, and they shared their seeds to get it out there again. That farmer rocks, whoever he/she is :)

planatus does bring up a good point about the round vs oblong varieties. It seems this melon has already been crossed to plenty of other stuff. Either of you know how that works genetically? cc definitely looks like the definition of oblong to me, which makes me think oblong is the way to go, but I also love variation and making new things. IF I were to put round m&s to cc, are the results going to remotely predictable? I was mostly planning to look for the heaviest weight I could sense thats the first thing I'll be going for. Maybe down the road I'll worry about mixing taste/resistance into it, but for the first step, I just want to make big cool melons. I cant find it, but I saw some seed someone developed that made the m&s look slightly pear shaped, and I thought that might have been from crossing round to oblong, but I thought round was typically an absolute trait as opposed to something line bred. maybe there are both. I wish I had bookmarked that page.

I really love the idea of making new things. Growing the same stuff as everybody else would never be good enough for my personality type. An example would be roaches. I breed them as feeders for my pet lizards. Was that good enough? NO. lol. I had to select the most colorful, and the biggest, and start side roach colonies to try and improve things. Its really ingrained in me for some reason, so as I get more and more into gardening, I'll definitely be spending my life trying to make new things and improvements every year :) I love the idea of open pollinated plants because of their variation, and am not fond of patented seeds. I'd rather be the guy making cool new things in a natural way and sharing them with others, as opposed to letting some scientist do it for me then telling me I cant play with it in future generations. Its really a big part of the fun to me, even if I have some crops fail once in awhile because of that unpredictability.

for whatever reason, I feel like this line should stay red fleshed. orange/yellow look nice, but not as yummy as red. I'll worry about colors down the road if I change my mind. I'm only 32, so i have plenty of time. If I grow a 200 lb melon with bright yellow moon and stars on it in the next decade, this will be a success. I have patients ;) Although realistically, it'll probably be done by someone in the south with my seeds which would still give me much satisfaction (I'm in MI so 200lb might be out of reach until I get south).

anyway, sorry about rambling on so much. I like talking plants :)

I know this one is old but, I have to say the m&s melon was never lost. My father grew it all the time. From the mid '60s(maybe earlier, just what I remember) through the late '80s when he stopped farming. When I was young I would eat so much my belly looked like a melon! His were the roundish 30 to 40 lb type. And they are a 100 day or more plant.

With that said I want a true moon and star melon. I have bought from 3 different sources, they have a few specks and no moon. Can someone recommend a source?

Thanks!

http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cgc/cgcgenes/wmgenes/gene12wmelon.html

(Sp gene) - Spotted cotyledons, leaves
and fruit; dominant to uniform foliage and fruit
color; Sp from 'Sun, Moon and Stars'* and 'Moon
and Stars'**