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O/T How do you tell when water melon is ripe

O

old

Well-known Member
Location
Camdenton Missouri
I've heard tap on it and I've heard look at the bottom of it for it to be white or yellow. But I want to know 199% sure way to tell other then to pick it and cut it open. Some how if you pick it and its not ripe it becomes chicken food instead of human food. Oh by the way I can not eat them I just grow them for my wife.
Thanks
Hobby farm
 
If you wait to pick them until the stem begins to dry up, it is as ripe as it is ever going to be. Hopefully the melon has not begun to rot by then.
 
The curl nearest the melon should be dried up (not still green). Also, roll the melon over and check underneath. The color on the bottom should be picking up a yellowish color.
 

A simple way id to take a broom straw and lay on top.. If the straw goes around in circles, it's ripe. If it sits still, it's not ready.
 
Rich,
Haven't done this in alot of years but we use to tap or flick it.If it had a deep tone it was time to get out the pocket knife.LOL I am sure the other replies work better.
Vito
 
I think my Dad had the best way. The tapping should sound hollow. So Dad would tell us Kids to tap the melon and then tap our head and if they sounded the same it was ripe. I'm not sure you better do that with your wife.
He would also plug one and if it was not quite rip leave it to a day or two. It would still be OK.
 
Wack one open with a corn knife.lol.Seriously. I go by the yellowish(cream) color on the bottom.
 
Wack one open with a corn knife.lol.Seriously. I go by the yellowish(cream) color on the bottom.
 
There is a very small pigtail on the main vine near where it attaches to the melon. When this small wire like curl turns yellow or dries up, the water melon is ripe. This, I have found is the most accurate way to judge when they are ripe.
 
I was loading a truck with potatoes one day and got to talking with him and found out he also raised about 300 acres of watermelons every year. so I asked him about this very question and he said to look for the yellow belly on them, find that and you have a good one. He also said that you can only raise melons in a field once every 7 years to control diseases, so you need to have a lot of ground available in order to rotate your crop like that.
 
Broom straw is the way we did it when I was a kid (late 40's & 50's) lay the straw crossways and it rotates endways and stops.

I buy in the store now, just ask any older farm type woman. I don't think they make any "real" straw brooms anymore.

Joe
 
1. Thump test. I use this in the grocery store and it works for me everytime, though it doesn't seem like anyone else in my family has the right "ear" for the sound.

2. The spot on the ground turns white.

3. Best test that I've read about in a seed catalog. Look at the tendril closest to the melon, but just before it. If that tendril has dried up and is brown, it is either ripe or virtually ripe. I use this test in the garden to choose which melons to thump.

Christopher
 
Dry tendril, yellow bottom, also if you grab the melon with both hands, blossom end up, take both thumbs and push downward, if it gives a little, she's dead ripe!
 
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