Thumping Watermelons

It's that time of the year again, a bit late this year though. The watermelons are getting ripe.

When I was a kid we lived in the suburbs but there was a big vacant lot next door where we always had a garden. In Maryland, you could grow great tomatoes but the melons always left something to be desired, to say the least. I always wanted to grow watermelons, and my folks humored me for a few years. I would get big lush vines but the watermelons wouldn't get ripe until frost and they would be puny, pitiful things only remotely resembling the melons in the store. It didn't take me too many years to decide that the there just wasn't enough heat and growing season in the suburbs of Baltimore for watermelons.

But I never gave up my love of watermelons, each summer seeking out the perfect melon. I got quite good at it. I always went for the largest and roundest melon with a full blossom end. I investigated the many ripeness tests. My Uncle Ralph subscribed to the scratch test. He would gently scratch the skin with his fingernail and if the green outerskin came off easily it was supposed to be ripe. I could never tell the difference, but then he was a watermelon connoisseur way beyond my youthful years; he even loved watermelon pickles made from the rind, probably the only person on earth who could actually eat those. Then there was the ground spot test. Ripe watermelons have sat on the ground long enough to have a nice big ivory colored spot where they touched the soil. Also, there was the stem test. If the stem broke off easily and cleanly, it was ripe, if it tore and left a stub, it wasn't. But most intriguing is the thump test.

The thump test is a study in hydro dynamics. An unripe watermelon is very dense and will 'thump' with a higher frequency than a ripe one. There are actually two schools of thumping. One is to flick the melon with your middle finger by restraining it with your thumb and giving it a good whack with your nail upon release. The other school is the 'pat' school. This is properly performed by slapping the melon gently with your open palm which makes it ring like a bell. Now it is very easy to tell an unripe melon from an overripe one. An unripe watermelon will give a hard high frequency response and an overripe melon will give an unmistakable dull thud since the heart tissue is collapsed, making a semi hollow cavity. A ripe melon will give you...well, something in between. And therein lies the crux of the problem. Any fool can tell if the melon is under or overripe, but it takes a real expert to distinguish a density difference demonstrated by heart tissue that has reached maximum sugar level and just started to breakdown. I have been working on this test since I was about eight and I haven't quite got it yet, but I am getting there.

So, by ten I was done with growing watermelons, but was embarking on a lifelong mission of studying the species like a fine wine. I have even been known to buy a melon, take it home, take one taste, and throw it away. On average I would say that about one in three storebought melons, that I have carefully selected, really qualify as a good melon, not ambrosia mind you, but a satisfactory experience. You have to understand that as a younger person, summer and watermelon were synonymous to me. I even had watermelon for breakfast as a teen. And I am thoroughly familiar with all the diuretic properties of the substance, dying for a piece before bedtime, but knowing what would happen at 2am. But as the years have gone by, the desire has waned a bit along with some other desires associated with the male species. Still, there has never been a summer where I didn't find at least one good watermelon.

Then a miracle happened. When we moved over here, we had ten acres to play with, flat alluvial soil, sun, tons of water. So, instead of one tomato and half a dozen strawberry plants in our tiny garden in Ukiah, we could now have a real garden. I delegated this project to Susie who needed to get her hands dirty on the weekend to save her sanity, while I on the other hand, have nothing to do but fuss with plants. On a whim she planted a few watermelons. I snickered, having been through this before, but she said what the hell. Now, part of having a garden (when you have land) is finding the perfect spot for the garden, and it took us three gardens to figure this out. But even our first feeble attempt produced corn, tomatoes, a few squash, and yes, watermelon, 'Crimson Sweet'. I watched those melons like a hawk. We didn't have the deer fence up yet, so everything except the corn was nightly pruned back, but not destroyed. The melons were hardly touched, which was a wonderful surprise.

Each week those melons put on another two or three pounds. By early August they were already bigger than anything I had ever grown. We just kept pumping the water to them, saying little prayers to the druid gods of veggie gardening. By the end of August I was thumping like mad. These little guys were reaching fifteen to twenty pounds and were the cutest thing in stripes. Finally, I got brave and cut one open. Wow, that was all I could think or say, wow. Not only were these melons good, they were great! This was bordering on the best melon I have ever tasted in my life. Now I know we landed in the right spot. But then a nasty little thought creeped into my head, were these melons really that good? Or was this just a trick of my mind, my pride faking me out? No, they were that good. We started giving them to neighbors. Now, you know what happens to neighbors to whom you start giving zuccini, they see you coming and they start heading for the car... uh, gotta go to the post office. Well, these neighbors started coming back and asking for more. They swore these were the best melons they ever tasted and even their friends swore it too, and they wanted some too.

Well, we have had watermelons in the garden ever since, some years we only get a few due to spring disasters or years where the gophers decide they like melons too, only they don't know which end to chew. In fact, the melons like living here and self seed coming up wherever we mix in the compost, and they come true too. And each year its the same thing, most of those melons will exceed not only the 'good' test but even exceed the 'great!' test. This year is a poor year, late spring, cold then hot, moved the melons to a new place, trouble with the water system, etc, but we still have melons. So yesterday I cut the first melon having determined that eventhough it was still quite small it had the right degree of 'thump'. And sure enough, 'great!' watermelon first shot out of the box.

And just a little teaser for you other poor wretches who have tried to grow the perfect melon: A 34 pounder record watermelon from last year.