Ah, when to harvest the dead-ripe watermelon. That part is not so easy.
Muskmelons give you perfume and slip from the vine when ready, there is nothing easier. With watermelons art and patience collide. It’s a checklist of sorts:
Did the spoon dry up (tiny leaf nearest the melon)?
Did the closest tendril dry up (also called the curly-cue near the melon)?
Is there a creme colored patch were the melon rested on the ground?
With an ear on the melon, flick it with your finger, do you hear “punk, punk” and not “pink, pink”?
All of the above are good indicators, but if you’re still not sure wait one more day.
Steven, I think you have just hit on the one aspect of Orangeglo that is a little negative. When they are too ripe, they often will sort of collapse inside and leave a hollow area- sometimes its quite a large void. Its teh only watermelon I’ve seen that gets these hollow spots, and the melon doesn’t always have to be overripe to get these, though they are certainly more prone to get them when they are overripe. Orangeglo also sours fairly quickly when over-ripe, and the flesh gets very soft and mushy as it gets very overripe.
I hate to tell you all this for 2 reasons: 1) Its hard for me to admit anything bad about my beloved Orangeglo and 2) I CERTAINLY don’t want to scare you into picking them too early. Picking one just a few days too early means you’ll miss the extreme sweetness and unique flavor (what I call “fruity” for lack of better word) that only Orangeglo has (though its subtle).
Your next question is likely to be “So how do I tell when they are perfectly ripe”. That is very hard for me to answer. Its like Justice Stewart said about pornography: I can’t exactly define it but I know it when I see it. Ray described it above quite well so hopefully that and your experience with other melons will help you pick yours at the right time. I sure hope so because I really want you to get the full experience!
(BTW…I fear we have hyped up Orangeglo so much on this thread that its bound to disappoint you. In the end its just a really good watermelon)
Steve, Orangeglo is a long season melon, and requires a bit of
patience. The only negative about it is the rind can become quite
brittle and requires delicate handling. The best method that I have
found in determining ripeness is the under side will develop long
thin orange stripes, and the outside will lose it’s sheen.
They can become quite large and 40 lbs. is not out of the question,
especially since you started so early. It also sizes down well. How
many melons do you have?
Ray I may only have this one. Haven’t spotted another so far. Maybe that’s why this one is so big. I can’t be sure it’s still getting bigger but if it’s stopped growing it hasn’t been for long.
The bottom does have an orange strip. Tendril still green.
Do you spray for powdery mildew or anything else? I’ve been spraying with Daconil once a week and I think it helps, but late in the season my vines look pretty crappy, especially the muskmelons
My Grandma used to check for ripeness of watermelon by taking a small sharp knife and made a small triangle cut and pull out that cut to look inside. If the flesh is red then she harvested the whole crops. If the flesh is light pink, she then put the triangle cut part back in place and check it again in a few days.
I tried that and had a rotten melon. I’ve also had rotten melons from cracks caused by hail damage. I’m not cutting into my melons to see if they are ripe.
Yeah,. If you only have one for now and that technique won’t do. If you have a bunch and wasted a few to get the right ripeness then that would not be an issue. She usually harvested in the hundreds.
For the tendril and the spoon, dry would be brown with no green.
All this watermelon talk has me wishing I would have planted some this year. They’ve gotten so cheap and of excellent quality around here that I switched over to growing ‘Ambrosia’ melons exclusively. Can’t get a good muskmelon anywhere.
Hey are you guys rotating? I was told 5 years before watermelons can be planted in the same spot again.
Does anyone cover crop their melon patches with mustard for disease suppression? A friend got a bag of mustard seed meal but it came all the way from Italy (as a labeled product) and is too expensive for me.
No, not if the stem is still green. The orange lines will become
more distinct and the rind will go from shiny to dull. It needs to
have a good hollow sound too, when you thump it. But each melon has
it’s own signs and these are some of them. The old two dried tendril
method rarely works.
No, I don’t spray at all. As the melons ripen, you’re going to see
some of the vines starting to die. This is just a natural progression,
but that vine has exhausted itself. Many people stagger their plantings
in order to extend the season, once the first vines die off.
We move our melon patch around every year and eventually get back to the original spot in 5 or so years. We do grow mustard in the same spots sometimes but it’s just a coincidence for us. We have grown brown and yellow mustard. We use mustard to make pickling spice, mustard, seasoning. If your interested in growing mustard you might want to see this post from last year Mustard seed Harvest. I got the yellow mustard seed from www.foodtolive.com so I could grow it as well as brown seed.
Ray,
We have squash bug problems so that’s how I stay ahead of them. They attack watermelon here. I have 7 garden spots and rotate crops between them. Sometimes we grow watermelon in the same spot two years if no pest bothers them. We do not spray watermelon. Squash bugs and other things that attack watermelon don’t bother mustard, corn etc…
I tend to plant in the same areas every year as well. But I’m constantly adding compost, mulch, and other organics to the soil… though I know that doesn’t help with disease prevention.
