I’m So Happy with My Watermelon Harvest!!! 🌿 🍉// Garden Answer

smells amazing do you smell it oh my gosh i grew that hey guys how's it going today we are harvesting some watermelons i'm so excited about this because when we planted i had no idea what to expect i'm not super experienced with watermelon either i mean i've grown them here and there throughout the years but never at in this scale i have eight watermelon plants in this area and you can see these are crimson sweets right here and they are absolutely beautiful we harvested our first one last night i had to call my dad though because i'm a super bad judge uh to be able to tell if a watermelon's ripe so i held the phone up to the watermelon and i was thumping on it i'm like does that sound ripe enough to pick and he said it did so we picked it and it was wonderful a tad tad bit over ripe so i thought we got to get out here and at least pick the ones that are ready so i wanted to show you some of the things to look for that i've learned to tell if a watermelon is ripe because unlike cantaloupe cantaloupe are easy because when they're ready the vine slips right from the end there it just slips right off when they're at their peak watermelons do not do that i mean the stem will look green and healthy even if the watermelon is overripe so one of the first things you can look for this is a heavy watermelon is the underside where it sits on the ground it usually has like a greenish white spot and when that starts to turn creamy yellow then you know it's ripe also that sound when you knock it when you thump on it you want to look for like a low hollow sound not something that just falls flat like a like a higher pitched tinny sound this one sounds really good and then you can touch the blossom end so not the stem end but this end where the blossom was and if there's any give at all which there is a little bit then you know it's right the other thing that i hear a lot of people say is that you wait until the tendril right above the stem so this thing right in here is all dried up and brown but the experts say not to heed that advice that's like the traditional advice because sometimes that can happen well after the watermelon's at its peak and you'll be picking them when they're way over ripe so i usually just go with the way this spot on the underside looks like the sound of the thump and then the feel of the blossom end so i'm going to pick this one this is just like i can't even explain what it feels like to grow your own watermelon and like actually have it form up like this and look so beautiful so what i want to do i've got two crimson sweet plants two sugar babies two joyride which are a seedless and two moon and stars i want to go through and harvest anything that's ready get them in my cart and then we will move to a shady spot and i want to talk about each one of these varieties a little bit more [Music] do [Music] [Music] wow [Music] oh my gosh you guys i cannot even believe that there were this many what i think to be ripe watermelon out there and there's still a whole bunch more that just need another couple of weeks to grow on and ripen a little bit so what i'm going to do is move all these into the shade and then we'll talk about each variety like this row right here is crimson sweets these are sugar babies i got two joyrides today and two moon and stars so let's load them up and find some shade [Music] all right we got all of the watermelon to fit in this cart and we ended up grabbing the gator so that we didn't have to pull it all the way over here i actually told erin this morning like i think i have maybe four or five watermelon that are ready to come off i had absolutely no idea that i had this going on out there which is so incredible to me so i do want to talk a little bit about each one of these varieties and just share what i do know about them i think i already mentioned that they've been in the ground for 73 days we started them in june it was already very hot and so the seeds germinated very quickly and they grew really quickly so even though like the crimson suites here are in 85 to 90 days so they haven't even reached their maturity day but because they were put in so late and had all of that heat i think they're a little bit ahead of the game and they're all rated on a specific sweetness scale it's a brix scale bri-x and the the highest rating i could find for a watermelon was a 13 and i think that one was called sugar cube or something like that the crimson suite comes in and comes in at a 9.9 so the one that we cut into last night was really sweet it was really tasty and the interesting thing too about this is that we have a lot of watermelon growers in our area we actually have a very favorable climate for growing watermelons thankfully but they have always told us down at the garden center they'd bring us watermelon every year and they said the way that they got the sweetest melons where they kept the water consistent while they were forming their fruit because that is very important they need a lot of water to so that their fruit form up nicely and they don't get malformed and all of that and then once they're up to a really nice size those farmers would cut the water and they'd stop watering and that way the melons would have a chance to accumulate their sugars and i guess it would make for a really tasty watermelon which is really they were probably some of the most amazing watermelon i have ever had i don't have the guts to do that you guys because like these have had the same watering all my pumpkins and cantaloupe have had all the way up to this point they get watered almost every day because it's been so hot and windy so i kind of wrote them off i don't have them separated from any of those other crops so i just thought you know what i'm not going to have super tasty watermelon this year and that's okay next year i'll know to put them in a different watering zone so i can cut their water and then also like these are ready but i also have all those little ones that are still growing and i don't want to forfeit all those other little melons out there so anyway this is the only one i want to weigh today because this is i think the heaviest one 18 pounds and that's pretty much where i expected it to be i thought it might be somewhere close to 20. i think that these average between 15 and 25 pounds the other ones are a little bit smaller but i think this is the one i want to cut into so we'll cut into each one of these this one feels nice and soft the coloring is really good so i brought my spoon so we could try it but let me get this before i wheeled my knife let me get this to where it's solid this is nerve-wracking experience right here please let it be red inside this one might be slightly over ripe too looks pretty good is slightly overripe this is just like last night's and that's why i thought when we cut into that one last night that we needed to get out there and at least get these bigger ones taken care of i would try it anyway it smells amazing do you smell it oh my gosh i grew that it was so exciting and it's all organic too you guys so i'm drooling watermelon juice when we planted these it was like barren out there and i did not pay attention to amending the soil like i should like it was i mean we ran the drip system and then at each planting site i dumped a little bit of this foam with land and sea compost and some spoma biotone starter fertilizer mixed it into the area planted my seeds and that's it i have not fertilized these since then and these are an average heavy feeder so they may have benefited from me going in with some garden tone kind of midway maybe like a month month and a half after i planted them but yeah i mean it just kind of got away from us and it's only been 73 days you know so what is that two and a half months anyway i think i should cut into one more just to see if i have one that's a little less ripe i'm going to line up all the crimson sweets in the back here so i can kind of unearth the rest of these so proud of these watermelon so the next one these are sugar babies you can see the difference in rind color these are just like a dark green i guess another way that people say they can tell that a watermelon's ready is if the rind color dulls a little bit instead of being super bright at dolls i haven't really paid attention close enough to know that but these fall on the brick scale at 10.2 so they should be a little bit sweeter than this and these actually come from a much more compact vine and they only produce fruits that are usually between 10 and 12 pounds so they're really easy to fit in a refrigerator and such so here we go they're also 78 day so they're the smallest or the shortest day pretty light in color they're really nice texture though not as good as these i just had too much water okay let me try one more though i wouldn't i wouldn't have wanted to leave these on the vine any longer though honestly because like they're starting to get that mealiness around the seeds so i think this is just a product of just that too much water so the crimson sweets can handle it apparently maybe this variety can't let me just try one more just out of curiosity if nothing else the chickens are going to love me oh that looks better a little bit of like hollow nests right there a little cracking but the texture looks really good oh that was a one-off hopefully this is good um this one has a better texture than this one so you win some and you lose some this is a big win right here next up i think these are joy rides i only got two joyrides which are seedless and two moon and stars so far there are more on the vine but they are getting completely smothered by my pumpkin plants i did not space things out properly i thought six six and a half feet was far enough but apparently it is not so anyway this one is an 85 day and it's supposed to be at 11.2 on the brick scale oh that looks good look at that that's the best texture in terms of like feel there's no mealiness yeah that's good the best i think sugar babies the best so far okay but this is like sometimes texture wins over like intensity of flavor for me in watermelon i just can't do mealiness like i could never eat this stuff that's around the seeds right there oh but that's exciting to have a good seedless right there and these two for a seedless watermelon are supposedly now i haven't grown many seedless watermelon but they're supposedly incredibly vigorous and really resistant to a lot of things that watermelon vines deal with and then the last one are moon and stars which are these right here and these i i don't know about so moon and star watermelon have a green rind with yellow dots and they usually have a big one so they usually have a moon with a bunch of little stars and you can see this is a little malformed so i don't really know what happened there because this one has had the same exact water as the rest it sounds a little high-pitched let me it's also a little bit smaller than i expected too this one feels really tender this is a 100-day maturity i'm going to cut into this one and these are a 9.7 on the brick scale and the flesh is supposed to be a fairly light pink looks pretty good bigger seeds look at that the size of the seeds versus like crimson sweets look at that that's something to consider right there like crimson sweets have very few seeds sugar babies have quite a number of seeds and then this one has quite a number that are huge so let's give this a try probably my least favorite of all four sugar baby i think is my favorite today that one melon then crimson sweet then the joy ride and then the moon and stars erin here you should have a taste like the texture is good the flavor isn't quite there and that could be a water issue like too much water maybe it's not bad no it's not bad but you're right yeah sugar baby sugar baby wins yeah well this has been really fun i honestly envisioned only having like four watermelon to show you guys and to cut into and it made me a little nervous i'm like well what if they're all crappy watermelon because you never know really until you get them off the vine especially with like i wasn't sure what the whole water situation and all of that so um anyway these should keep for a while they're better cold and most people will tell you that as well get them in the refrigerator and that kind of helps firm them up too a little bit so i'm going to be storing some of these in the refrigerator or give a lot of these away because there's no way i mean 25 watermelon that's a lot and i'm going to give the less favorable ones to the chickens but i do want to play a clip really quick for you guys of the area in the very beginning when we were just planting just to remind you what it looked like out there versus what it looked like today and really just kind of the faith in planting and just just doing it just getting out there and tossing seeds in the ground come what may you know you may not know a lot about a crop like this one i don't know a lot about watermelon but i learned the best by doing it and just getting out there and either succeeding or failing and then just picking up little tidbits along the way so anyway i hope this video was fun to watch and i hope it was helpful maybe a little bit you picked up a little bit of information that would make me happy so i hope you all are having a great day and we'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 311,706

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: HSPfrlMTpl8

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020