I wonder what causes your melons tor rot? I've never heard of that....I know fungus gets to melons pretty easily...what I do is I take a five gallon bucket and drill a series of tiny hole in it about 1 inch to 4 inches from the bottom then I bury about 6 inches of the bucket in the soil...then plant my melons and cucumbers next to the bucket....when I want to water my melons I just fill the bucket with water and it weeps out of the holes in the side of the bucket. into the soil at bout the level of the plants roots....this keeps water from evey touching the leaves of the plant, and fungus can't grow on them...but with all the summer rains you get it would be impossible to keep your plants leaves dry it must be a fungus hell///....I live in the SF bay area and we don't get really hot summers which is what melons require,but I've had pretty good luck by growing TRUE cantaloupes, not the muskmelons we call cantaloupe..most of them are french and only grow to the size a little larger than a softball,but they are much much more flavorfull than our muskmelons, and much sweeter, and they can handle the cooler weather....I dream about living someplace just a little warmer hell even twenty miles away.where it would be easier to grow things that need heat like tomatoes, chilis ,watermelons..I can grow them but they would do better with just another 10 or 15 degrees heat. when we have heat waves they don't last long as the hot air rises it creates a vaccum and it pulls cold air off the ocean, our costal current comes down from alaska so the water is cold.....that cold sea air hits the dry land and turns into fog.....and presto change-o the sun disappears.
Peppers sound like they would do ggod where you live, after all the pepper plant originated in the Amazon basin a hot humid place.although the chilis I grew up eating all came from dry hot climates....like Hatch....I have family that live about an hour away from Hatch and they send me chili...I think they get most of their chili from Demming New Mexico. even though chili is grown all over New Mexico southeren N.M. seems to produce the very best chili.