That Watermelon Is A Liar!

Two weeks ago I was out in my garden, per the usual. After inspecting everything, I moseyed on over to the watermelons to check out their growth. When the watermelons first started growing I had 10-15 little melons on the vines. Now I could only see 5or 6 big ones. I checked around the vines and found the spots where I had laid down grass mulch under a tiny melon only to find there was no longer a melon in that spot, only a vine stump. Seems like my watermelon plants can only support so many watermelons at a time.

I really, really wanted to pick one of the melons. They are the Sugar Baby variety so they are not supposed to grow very large. I thought surely the big one was ripe. I even knocked on it and it sounded hollow. I held off though and did not pick the watermelon.

That night I was reading about melons in my gardening book and it said that a melon is ripe when the rind turns dark green (which my melon was!) and it sounds hollow when you knock on it (which my melon did!). Hmmm I thought. I better pick this melon. I thought about it all night and decided that yes I should pick it. I started getting really excited about having watermelon to eat in my lunch.

The next morning before work I went out to the garden and clipped the big watermelon right off the vine. I brought it in. It weighed about five pounds.


And then the moment of truth. I cut the melon right in half and this is what I found:


That punk melon was not ripe at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It tricked me!

Oh I was so upset and disappointed. Once you pick a watermelon there's no way to ripen it afterwards. It's not like a tomato where you can just set it in the window for a day or two to ripen it up.

I vowed right then not to pick any melons for at least a week. It's been two weeks now and I still haven't picked any. They are getting really big but I'm afraid to pick one again! What if it's not ripe? Then another melon will be wasted!

I had to chop that melon up and feed it to the compost. Ugh!