Melons

Here is the first row of melons planted. I know, boring picture. I put it here for future comparison because if everything goes as planned, in a few weeks I should be posting a picture of an absolute jungle of vines loaded with melons. To the far left is the first row of tomatoes planted last week. The area in between will be filled in with sweet corn. As I move to the right of this first melon row, there will be more melons plus additional tomatoes and probably pumpkins and winter squash. Moving to the right goes toward the old, dead oak tree. I think it will look pretty cool if there are bright orange pumpkins in front of it. That might capture the perfect Halloween shot, but let's get back to melons.

This row has four watermelon varieties, plus Crenshaw, and Ambrosia melons. The watermelon varieties are Congo, Charleston Gray, Georgia Rattlesnake, and a seedless one called Ultra Cool. This is the first time I've seen seedless varieties available through retail stores. I bought these seeds at the local Lowes. Years ago when we were farming, we paid around fifty cents a plant for seedless watermelons. That adds up quick when you put a few acres in. I'm curious to see how this one turns out. Watermelons are something you have grow yourself to fully appreciate how good they are when everything is done right. Most of what you get from commercial channels are the product of many compromises. Most everyone knows how hard it is to tell if a watermelon is ripe. Some tap on it, some knock on it like knocking on a door, and some try to look at the ground spot to see if it is a straw yellow color. Countless newspaper articles try to explain how and why you do these things to up your chances of getting the perfectly ripe watermelon. Fact of the matter is none of it means much if you have inexperienced people picking the watermelons out in the field. The most reliable indicator is when the tendril closest to the stem on the melon is comletely dry. That is what we trained our crews to look for. If that condition was met, then they would look at the color of the ground spot and tap on it to see if it sounded hollow. The most important aspect was the dried tendril though. Unfortunately, you can't see that part when looking through stacks of watermelons at a market. Most of the commercial watermelons satisfy some criteria for probability of being ripe, but being able to watch the progress as they ripen is the best way to figure out when the perfect time is to pick a particular one. You can do that when you grow them yourself. Both of my kids have fond memories of when I grew watermelons commercially. We would plant ten to twenty acre blocks every two weeks until there were five or six staggered plantings. The method for determining when it was the best time to send a crew in to pick a field involved sampling hundreds of watermelons. We would walk a zig zag pattern through the field and cut melons with dried tendrils. We cut them in half lengthwise and sampled the very center, between the two rows of seeds. If the majority of the melons were fully ripe and the taste was very sweet, we would have a crew go through and pick the field the next day. I would have the kids help me with this because believe it or not, you can get tired of sampling watermelon. They had a blast for obvious reasons.

The Crenshaw were a favorite of my grandfather. I doubt he ever made any profit growing these though. He just liked them so he grew them every year. The main reason they could be hard to squeeze a profit out of is they have very thin skin. If the sun hits the melon too much, it sunburns it and make it unmarketable. Starting when the melons are still green, you have to scout the field every few days and any that are too exposed need to have straw placed over them for protection. This adds to the cost of production and coupled with the fact that this variety doesn't yield very well, it can be very hard to turn a profit on them. All of that doesn't take away from the fact that they are one of the best melons to eat. For those of you that can't grow them yourselves or are too far away to realistically talk me out of one, hit the farmers' markets this summer and get one. You won't be disappointed.

Ambrosia was the another melon I planted today. It is for all intents and purposes a cantaloupe. It's just a cantaloupe that is way better than the rest. It has never done well commercially because it's too fragile to ship any distance. It is very good when picked at full slip, which is when cantaloupes should be picked. This means the stem will easily slip away from the melon with minimal effort. That is when they are fully ripe on the vine. I think the melons planted today will all be great. The best melons are the ones that grow in the most warm weather possible. These will grow all during May, June, and July. During August, they will be kept without water so they ripen. This is the absolute best window to grow them. I will probably plant another row in a couple weeks, but that's just to keep the summertime theme going. This row is the "one".