So we harvested our first watermelon this year. I'm not entirely sure what this variety is. From memory it is country something (I keep some seeds each year as it does well here).
This beauty was 10kgs. Normally I would expect to get 1-2 big watermelons from each vine but this year we are getting a lot more than that. I just pulled two more today. One was 11kgs and the other probably 6kg. We have another 8 or so of varying sizes still in the garden. Probably another 3 of the massive ones.
Working out when a watermelon is ripe used to be a daunting task as there are all these blogs on checking the colour of white patch underneath to knocking on it and listening. All of these are really subjective and seems like a lot of guess work.
When researching this year, I stumbled on a website that said to follow the watermelon stem to where it connects to the main vine. Right opposite where it connects to the vine, you will find a tendril. Once that tendril turns brown it shows that the vine has cut supply off to the watermelon and it is ripe. This is what I have done this year and so far it works. The science makes sense to me too.
The coolest thing about this much watermelon is that we were able to carve it up and drop massive chunks off to all the neighbours. You don't get much fresher than 3 hours off the plant (chill time in the fridge).
Our moon and stars watermelon have only just started forming fruit so it seems these are a later variety. Hopefully they are tasty so we can grow each variety each year for a longer harvest period.
Share
Share this blog on social media