How Do You Know When Watermelons Are Ripe?

If you've eaten a watermelon lately, there's a good chance it came from south Georgia. South Georgia is known as the watermelon capital of the world. We've been growing watermelons all our lives. Now the ones I grow in my garden is a Crimson Sweet and I'm going to show you today how we know when a watermelon is ripe to pick out of your garden. Over time I've heard a lot of different things about telling how watermelons are ripe -- talking about the green in here, how green it is or how pale it is, the belly if it's yellow, thumping it, and all kinds of things. There's all kinds of tales out there. But we're going to show you the way we know when the watermelon is ripe. It's been in the upper 90s the last few days and this watermelon has got a little sun -- got a little blister there. This watermelon would be culled in a commercial market situation here, but there's nothing wrong with it to eat. When you see a little sun on there, that's a good indication that watermelon is ripe, but this is the sure fire way to find out. There's what we call a curly Q that's attached to where the stem meets the vine right there. And you can see that curly Q right there has to be dried up all the way back to the main stem. If it's dried all the way back to the main stem, we'll clip it and we know we've got a good ripe watermelon. Alright, here's an example of one that's getting there but it's not quite ripe. We follow back the stem and we find that curly Q and we look at it. And it's dried up about half way and you can see it has some green in it from halfway back. So this particular one is a few days off. This one here is probably a couple weeks off. It's a little bit on the small side. And you can see there where the stem connects to the vine there, that curly Q is green all the way out. And it will start drying from this end and work its way in. This particular one is probably a couple weeks out. These are two that the curly Q was dried all the way back, so we're pretty sure they're ripe. Now this is a Crimson Sweet. It's a little larger than some of the varieties they grow nowadays. Some of the varieties they grow now are smaller, so you can get them in the refrigerator. These older varieties tend to be about 20 to 25 lbs -- it's a seeded variety. The flesh in it is a little bit sweeter to me and a little bit firmer than the newer varieties, but there again you have the seeds to deal with. So we're going to cut this one right here and see what it looks like. It could have probably stood to wait a couple more days, but it's pretty ripe in there. And look at that heart right there. A lot of good watermelon right there. When they start getting ready, we'll pick them and put them underneath a big shade tree where they'll stay cool -- the sun stays off of them. Go out there and we'll eat -- I'll eat one or two a day. I love watermelons. And a watermelon a day will keep the kidney stones away.

Channel: Hoss Tools

Views: 1,007,856

Rating: 4.7161031 out of 5

Keywords: hoss tools, hoss garden tools, garden tools, vegetable garden, vegetable gardening, organic gardening, organic garden, backyard garden, backyard gardening, growing watermelons, watermelon ripening, backyard watermelons, crimson sweet watermelons, seedless watermelons, ripe watermelons, garden watermelons, homestead, sustainable living, sustainability, homesteading, homesteader, homestead garden, sustainable agriculture, sustainable farming

Id: 2kjOnnhcLfs

Length: 3min 19sec (199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2016