Out in the Garden

How can you tell if a watermelon is ripe?

No, that title is not the beginning of a funny little kids joke but it does sound like one. Actually that is kind of appropriate because my first harvested watermelon was a joke. it certainly was NOT ripe. I apparently do not know how to tell. Why am I telling you this? Two reasons: First, I wrote in my profile and on my first post "New Beginning" that I was going to blog about my garden successes and failures. Second, I thought that you could help me. Can anyone give me any tips on how to know when to pick a watermelon?

I thought I could tell by the sound it made when knocking on it. My daughters and I thumped our first Sugar Baby watermelon, thought it sounded right, excitedly picked it and put it in the refrigerator. Later, with much anticipation, we cut it open and found this:

Disappointment. It wasn't ripe yet. We tried to eat the middle anyway. I could tell that it would taste great if it were ripe.

I did some checking on the web and found a pretty good article about this written by Kenny Point on his site, veggiegardeningtips.com. Let me know what you think of his ideas, or if you have others.

If you're not familiar with the Sugar Baby variety of watermelon, you should try it. They are round and only get about 7 or 8 inches in diameter. They are really sweet (when ripe), and can be eaten by 1 or 2 people. We like them because of the small size and the fact that they don't take as much room in the garden to grow. Here is a picture of the vines growing next to a little decorative fence that Sarah made, and a picture of the melon next to a pint jar of pickles (to show you the size).

Once again, please let me know your secrets for telling when it is time to harvest watermelon. Thanks!

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02:42, Monday, August 14, 2006 .. Posted by Kitty

I dont know if this works for all varieties of melons, but my dh and I grew some this year and he said that the way to tell if a melon is ripe is to look at the stem. If it is brown and disconnected from the vine, they are ready. This is also how we buy our melons from the store. Always choose the ones with the brown stem. Any green stems means that it was picked before ripeness. This is all I know lol, but he did grow a few this summer and he waited till they fell off the vine and they were very very sweet.
Have a good day.
Kitty

Edited by Kitty on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 02:42