Hi Rachel! Personnally after a few years of growth I know that I can adjust my calibers just by changing planting densities : the densier the smaller. It’s also making crop slightly ealier.
For example last year my calibers at 4plants/m2 were averaging at 2.0kg, at 2 plants/m2 they were at 2.7kg or so. And I hatvest more weight at 4 than at 2plants/m2 : 4,5 vs 4kg/m2. Plastic tarp, no input, zero watering.
If you want to go on that path try Navajo Winter, which stores well, is pink inside and quite nice.
Personnally I’ve had a project of long storage watermelon running for 3 years… which I abandonned few days ago ! those in pic all went to the compost after opening… because the taste just isn’t there.
My understanding is that
- Globally the sweeter it is the more prone it is to decay. So I don’t see how I could get a sweet, nice, crispy and juicy watermelon for Christmas
- There is possibly a necessity to sow those known “storage watermelon” later and so harvest them later to really get them good for Christmas. Otherwise I just can’t get my head around it, after years trying : getting 1 very good last year on the 15/11 and zero this year on the 25th is just not satisfying. Though I did put into it something like 15 varieties called “long storage”. So there must be a trick. Also consider that behind those 15 or so fruits there was 30 others already composted, which decayed in october and november…
I did buy a giant watermelon in an Amish farm in Vermont by the end of October which was just harvested out of a small pile of “the last ones”. Was delicious and juicy. Harvesting a watermelon that late means to me late sowing (end of june? July?), and it still doesn’t say if it would store. Got seeds of those if anyone interested.
I also had 2 other watermelon populations, just differentiated by earliness (“early”, and “standard”) but I decided to fusion those for simplicity, and also because I think in my climate it wasn’t relevant : earliness still is first criteria… so bye bye “long storage” and then fusionning the rest… now I’m just focusing on just one population :
- early vigor selection (sowing many seeds + keeping few plants),
- from next year on cold germination will be my new and main big “selection pressure” (I’ll sow them around the 1st-15th of April instead of the 15th of May - and that is to try getting more precocity : start harvesting before August),
- then of course amazing taste is what triggers seed saving. And for reasons I won’t delve into right now, but because “amazing taste” is pretty subjective, and having had measured failures in terms of improvment of selection in 2025 despite spending tens of hours in selection in 2024, and assessing thzt selection as too subjective, I decided that before any taste assessment I will do a BRIX measurement (so a sugar measurement) before any taste assessment : I’ll discard anything under 10% + anything under 1-1,5kg. Then do taste assesment, looking for aroma complexity and of course the more basic but absolute necessary crispiness.
Behind that a coherence with the quest for vigor :
- sugar level + weight ensures me a relative objectivity in my pre-selection (relatively to harvest date that indicates clearly that a plant has been particularly efficient at photosynthetizing those high energy compounds),
- then my taste assesment concentring on aroma complexity goes with the lines of James White, John Kempf, Harriet Mella and others : yes it’s partially “subjective” but behind our taste buds, we reveal what a refractometer (the optical tool for brix level) cannot tell, and that is 100% correlated or alined with the capacity of the plant to have tremendous soil-plant interactions, so to say having a good microbiome, good microbial relationships, a capacity to… “make friends”! In other words : “No soil intelligence, interaction = no aromatic complexity”, in principle.
So it’s inspired both by a major failure to make progress (deemed due to too much subjectivity) and by recent development in sciences… but to the core it just validates the simple farmers selection : yes it becomes kind of technical with that BRIX-thing but that should ensure some consistance with the pre-selection with at least one objective criteria.
And again : having had failures, so to say not measuring progresses in TASTE, the overall taste still remains very good and satisfying : I’ve had many market gardeners satisfied with my 2024 “selection” this year. They were just remarking that it’s more complicated to harvest than a single strain, as cues for maturity are less easy to get : but the overall vigor and earliness was comparable to the best, if not better, for ex the usual “Sugar Baby” variety.
I got loads of seeds ultra-diversified if some are interested.