Easy Sunday: a perfect watermelon

What is inside is always a bit of a mystery, even for an experienced watermelon grower.

Picked yesterday: 22 pounds.

My father had a good system for finding a ripe watermelon: Pick a large, heavy melon in a field of melons that are coming ripe.

My melons are coming ripe.

A farmer picking melons has more information than does a consumer in the grocery store. I break open melons in the field and see them and taste them, which is how I know the field is "coming ripe." There is a lot of waste involved in getting clarity on which melons are perfect inside.

I compare the shininess of the melon with others adjacent to it. The skin goes from shiny to matte when it is ripe. It is subtle, but I can see the shift, especially when I have a point of comparison between melons I have broken open.

The underside of the melon where it touched the ground goes from whitish-yellow to yellowish-buff when the melon is ripe. That, too, is subtle. 

A melon that feels heavy for its size is likely ripe because the flesh inside is filled with water. I also listen for a dull "thud" sound when I thump the melon with my finger. Hollow and drum-like means empty, i.e., underripe.  But there is a problem with the dull thud sound. The melon might have been ripe for a while and might be overripe.

The best practice is to walk around the melon field, looking for large, matte melons, with a buff-colored spot on the bottom. Thump the largest ones. Heavy ones with a dull thud should be picked then. There is a range in which fully ripe melons verging on ripe to overripe are still pretty good, but the ideal is to pick them promptly when they come ripe. Young-ripe is best.

Melons in a field come ripe one at a time over a five-or-six week period starting about 80 days after planting, but ending abruptly after the first frost, whenever that comes. 

None of this is foolproof. Sometimes there are surprises, as with ones that get ripe without getting matte, like the one in the photo. I picked this melon as a test of the field, suspecting it wasn't quite ripe and fully expecting to bring it home only to throw it away as underripe. Instead, it was perfect. Fully sweet. A hint of crispness. Delicious!

People buying grocery-store melons during off-season months have a much lower chance of getting a great melon. A commercial grower in Mexico or Yuma filling truck trailers with melons needs to be efficient. Going over the entire field choosing melons, picking some but waiting on others, increases labor costs. Big factory farm commercial growers pick in bigger ranges of melon development.

If a reader is somewhere near Medford, Oregon, or Medford's latitude -- Chicago, New York, Boston --  this would likely be the start of the local watermelon season. Go to a farmers market, if possible.

I am not selling any melons. I grow a few for fun now, mostly to eat myself. I am fussy about my melons, but I try not to be a snob.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]