Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Watermelons

At the beginning of the summer I decided to try growing watermelons. I decided to plant one plant in the corner of the raised bed where I had planted potatoes. My theory was, once the potatoes were ready and gone (mid-June), the watermelon plant could spread out in the same area throughout the summer months. The variety was Black Diamond.

This actually worked well. Just about the time I was digging up the potatoes, the watermelon vines were branching out and needing more space. I was delighted to see that there were lots of flowers. Pretty flowers. This meant I should have plenty of melons.

And I did. At one point I had about a dozen melons of varying sizes tucked under the large leaves. My problem was I was never sure when the watermelons were ripe. I kept picking them and cutting them open to find white inside. 

I started asking around to find out how to tell when watermelons were ripe. I did searches online. I thought I was doing everything right. And each time it would be white and pink inside. The little bite of red in the middle was tasty.

So my chickens were the happy recipients of about a dozen watermelons throughout the scorching summer. They loved them!












2 comments:

  1. Our chickens feasted on watermelon this summer, too, just because we had so many that I got tired of eating them. What works for me re: knowing when they're ripe, is checking the little curly-cue on the vine closest to the melon. When it's completely dried out and brown, I snip the melon off the vine. Then I usually let it sit for a day or two in the sun before taking it in.

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