Since we're so close to each other here in NYS I'll share with you what I used to do with all my melons.
Direct seeding is really not the way to go here b'c the soil warms up so late and most melons take so long before ripe fruits appear.
I would start all of my melons, and cukes as well, inside and sow about two weeks before set out date which for us should be in the early part of June. If you sow sooner you start to get the long vines going and that makes it harder to transplant.
I'd use large cells, maybe about three inches in a standard sized nursery tray and plant five seeds, one in the middle and four surrounding. Then let them germinate and grow for a bit
Then carefully tap out the cluster of plants to transplant, where you've hopefully added some sand to the soil, where you're going to put your plants.
See how they do, then thin down to the strongest three plants/hill ( a hill is not an actual hill, just terminology). I'd space the hills about 4 ft apart, but it sometimes depended on the actual varieties I was growing.
Did I get good production every year? Nope. Again, it depends on the specific varieties being grown, but when the nights are coolish, as they can be where we live, the melons are not happy and sometimes I couldn't mature them before it got just too darn cold for them to progress.
I used to use one 250 ft row just for melons of all kinds as well as watermelons and did have my faves.
