"What The Angels Eat"

Image Gallery

Later, I moved to the Midwest and this one of the first things I learned is that covered all around me those magical there is a method to the madness of con watermelon patches I'd imagined: summing all the watermelons you Arkansas melon farms; irrigated fields of can when you can. Watermelons can't melons in Colorado; watermelons ripen be canned or dried like other fruits, in the foothills of Missouri. People which makes eating your fill and sharing even grew melons in their own back the rest the order of harvest day. It all yards! Right away, I bought a 49C packet helps advance the mythic status of the of seeds (this was a while ago) and was melon, though, as no other fruit comes on my way to "watermeloning." close to capturing a season so perfectly.

What to Plant
—————————————————

Practically every garden catalog offers several varieties of watermelon. I counted more than 30 in my half-dozen catalogs alone. There's a melon for everyone: bush and midgets for small gardeners; vines that produce icebox, picnic and family sized melons; melons with skin tones ranging from green gray to green striped to yellow, with centers of red, pink, white and yellow. There are seedy and seedless varieties, and melons shaped round, oval, long or thin. And each catalog description contains such tantalizing adjectives as "mouthwatering," "sweet," "juicy" and "delicious" everything a watermelon is supposed to be!

Seed prices range considerably I've seen everything from $3.55 per 1/2 ounce to $2.75 per ounce-depending on the catalog and melon variety. Buy your seeds from a company whose service and quality you've come to trust. Selecting Seeds
—————————————————

To find a melon suited to your particular growing season, read the fine print in your catalogs. I think the reason we never grew melons when I was a kid was that Pennsylvania summers just aren't as long and hot as Midwestern summers. But that need not stop northern gardeners. Several varieties have been developed that require a much shorter growing season. Northern gardeners can also get a jump on their season by starting plants indoors (see "Growing Melons," below).

Short season varieties include Sugar Baby, which is listed in every one of my catalogs, a testament to its popularity. Taking only 70 days from seed to ripe fruit, this melon is round, dark green and weighs eight to 12 pounds thus, an icebox variety. Yellow Doll, an All-America Gold winner and about the earliest melon you can grow, ripens in 65 days, weighs only six to eight pounds and has an attractive variegated green-striped skin. Park's Honey Red produces round, seedless, eight inch melons in only 65 days.