Loads of watermelon will be harvested in the next fortnight. Those I had to transplant due to direct seeding fails - and which are flagged in white on pictures - are about 20 days behind those direct seeded. Transplantation shock was huge despite the great care I took of them, even adding some vermicompost to them thinking compensating this shock. Looks like it did nothing. My guess is that it’s also partially due to clear and big drought and huge heat wave starting in mid May, i.e. around when I transplanted them.
How are you doing participants to this focus group? Do you need tips to assess maturity? How are your plants looking?
Harvest started couple days ago for me…
My plants are pretty behind what with the heat waves and now tennis ball sized hail (luckily we got through mostly unscathed…), but here are the first fruits forming. The biggest got munched on (of course). I’d love your tips on judging maturity! Thanks
Thank you @rsalzman for the follow up. Giving you tips shortly.
Here it grows like crazy since temperatures went down and I irrigate manually (something like 2 liters per plant a week). New shoots are emerging, news watermelons are formed daily.
As Jenna says in next video the dry tendril on the opposite side of the stem is the “single most reliable indicator”. She puts the other possible indicators into context :
Personnally I come from the thumping technique, with good results, but selecting for somewhat a collective I went to this more objective harvest criteria - objective in the sense that you don’t have to interpret anything, you just see it, contrary to the sound or rebound with the thumping technique.
Haven’t found the tendril work here at all. Might be because of the cooler and at times wetter climate. I have had them dry right after pollination and I have had them stay green when fruit is definetely ripe. Haven’t really paid much attention to them lately. Same with any other trick. they just seem little too dependant on opinion on what sound or colour is right. Usually go by days, although lately there really hasn’t been any other option than leave as long as possible and hope they are ripe enough.
It takes around 45 days to ripen here so I mark the pollination or know that it’s after mid july and ripening will need as long as I have. If it’s been really warm and pollination has been early little less than 45 might do. Same with small fruits, but lately it’s been just as long as possible. Should have said I go by days.
Thanks for the info. I’d like to hope the tendril test could be reliable cause that seems way simpler than judging sounds and/or marking and counting days. Any tips on what sound to be looking for when tapping watermelons? haha
I know quite precisely what sound and sensation to look for but that’s gonna be next to impossible to translate that to English… It’s already hard to name that to my french counterparts! That’s notably why I went to this tendril indicator as a basis for selection.
If French is better I’m bilingual ahha, but no I totally get it. After perhaps years of cultivating watermelons, I too in the future with have that indescribable sound clear in my head
My 2025 and 2026 harvest indicator : tendril opposite to the fruit being dry.
A slightly hollow sound with an adequate rebound feeling tends to confirm maturity, as well as a yellow ground spot. This may not be of much value in other climates, as seen before, and yes cues of maturity are way harder to find in a grex than in a known variety, so if we want to get better harvest year after year (i.e. do "selection") we better be serious from start to keep the consistency of our maturity assessment criteria, i.e. cues that trigger our harvest. I’d love to get experienced breeders there to get a glimpse of their own understanding, and knowledge that could apply to our “landrace” thing.
Anyway I hope the few of us following that thread will enjoy eating exceptional watermelons this year… Far better than those in the grocery store. That is still pretty easIly achievable!
My unwatered direct seeded watermelons are also starting to ripen but they are mini mini clearly from lack of water (in my mind). It’s been the hottest year on record and they got no water, but, they are producing lots of fruits and there’s a pretty good variety. I have a couple plants in another area that are producing much fewer but larger typical sized fruits, tbd.
I’ve collected seeds from two that had gotten cracked either by insects, hail, or something else, and while small, they had lots of viable seeds and the little bit I tasted that wasn’t rotten was quite sweet.
One looks like the original Cekirdegi Oyali with its beautiful seeds and another seems to be a cross with the Cekirdegi Oyali and something else because the seeds are a mix of the decorative cuts and an overall rough bumpy texture.
Got around to cutting up and gathering seeds from the unwatered survivors that were direct seeded into a field with just some fine wood chips in a thin layer to keep the soil from compacting before they sprouted. There’s not much to eat, but all of them were tasty (and different tasting) with a range of phenotypes that show clear cross pollination from my year one mixes of varieties in 2025. Each had its own characteristics, no one was the same. Specifically, I saw at least three different crosses with Cekirdegi Oyali (based on the decorative seeds) in addition the earlier one. Perhaps a decorative seed watermelon grex is in my future? They are very tasty too.
The individuals from today. More are still maturing in the field, though without significant rain I doubt I’ll have any big ones from this area. Some hope for my other couple of plants elsewhere.
It’s definitely a bit less sweet than the others, a bit “lemony” but I still think it’s good! I’ll look out for others with that in mind in the future.
I would like to be part of this project next year. This year I tried out watermelons the first time in the field with seeds I brought back from VietNam and I was really surprised to get a few ripe, tasty watermelons.
The next year I would like to grow some more and maybe a few ones from your project, adapted a little bit more to european conditions.
I am growing a mix of honey-/sugarmelons in the field in the middle of germany for three years now with good success.
So, next year I will add more watermelons to the field if I could get more seeds…
Tell me what you are planning the next season (I know the season of this year didn’t end yet)?
Hi Jürgen, it’s so satisfying getting our first tasty watermelons! I’m glad you achieved that in your first grow out, same as I fid in 2021 with a “Moon and Stars” strain.
Yes, I’ll share with you seeds of my best and early watermelons. As I’m putting more selection pressure (towards earliness and great taste) I do select from less watermelons than I did, maybe keeping only 10% of the harvest, so let’s say probably 30 out of a total of 3-400. Still there is loads of diversity in that, notably because of this year crosses but also because their genetic of each is unstable, due to couple crosses every 3-4 years.
I will do packets of one seeds from each selected watermelon, and send them to all participants to this Focus group. So this will not really allow a lot of direct sowing (risky) but still it would be great to access loads of diversity at one time, and so doing transplants.
I’ll probably go back to transplants and very probably grow a lot less next year due to me moving home in the autumn and changing land.
Cheers
That’s notably why I went to this tendril indicator as a basis for selection.
