Like tiny pieces of bright blue sky dropped into your garden, forget-me-nots are one of the few true-blue flowers available to gardeners.These plants are steeped in history and symbolism, and are eas
12.06.2023 - 00:56 / gardenerspath.com / Sylvia Dekker
How to Pick a Ripe WatermelonPicking up a ripe watermelon from the bin at the grocery store is easy. But when you have to decide on your own whether the big, beautiful fruit you’ve been cultivating is ready to be eaten, it can be a difficult decision.
Unlike many fruits, watermelons do not continue to get sweeter after harvest, so the timing must be perfect.
On a hot summer’s day, you want a perfect slice of sweet, crisp, juicy watermelon. No underripe and green-tasting slices are welcome, and we’re going to pass up any that are overripe and mushy, too.
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Unfortunately, the only time you will truly know for sure whether or not a given melon is ready to eat is the moment you slice it open and take a bite.
So, armed with someone’s advice on how to tell if the watermelon is ripe, you give the fruit a solid thump. Is the resulting noise classified as a dull reverb, a hollow echo, or a deep sound? And which sound really indicates what level of ripeness?
This commonly advised knuckle-rapping method is not foolproof, and even for experienced gardeners, it is very hard to get right.
How else can you make sure you’re not going to be wasting a developing beauty by picking it too soon?
We cover the clues present on the plant and fruit itself below, so you can pick yours at its peak.
Here’s what we’ll talk about:
Time to MaturityCommercial growers will sample sweetness and ripeness by picking a few random melons throughout the field around the time when they are supposed to be ready.
But if you only have one or two plants and have been babying the few round fruits they’ve produced, waiting for the perfect time to harvest them, you
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