We love watermelon. Some of my favorite memories are of my Dad bringing out a watermelon on a summer evening and us eating it outside with the juice dripping down our faces and arms. We’d be running around bare-footed. If we got really messy, Mama would drag the hose pipe over and make us squirt off, then run around some more to dry off before we could go in. Sweet memories for sure. I loved it near the end of summer, on a Sunday evening, we’d have a watermelon cutting and several of the people would bring a watermelon and after the service, we’d go out back, spread newspapers on the picnic tables, cut them up and everyone would have some. The kids (and some of the men) would have a seed-spitting contest. Yes, salt, please. After my Dad had a huge heart attack at 40, we quit eating salt on anything, but the good ones are so sweet, they didn’t need salt anyway.
—Jane D. O’Dell
I’ve eaten watermelon pretty much every day this summer and I’ve enjoyed every single bite. Sometimes Granny will ask me if my watermelon was any good. I always tell her I’ve never had a bad watermelon 🙂 Which isn’t exactly true. It’s just that I love watermelon so much that even the ones that aren’t exactly perfect are still good to me.
Most of the ones I’ve eaten have been store bought, but this week I eat the first of the sugar baby watermelons we planted this year. They were so good! Small but good.
I noticed a volunteer watermelon plant that had come up in one of our garden beds. I’m guessing it come up from a watermelon I ate last year. I couldn’t bear to tear it out just in case it produced anything. It has two watermelons on it. I check them every day to see if they’ve grown any. I’m thinking if we get a little rain they will really take off.
Last night’s video: Unusual Words and Phrases Used in Appalachia that Begin with the Letter O.
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Tipper we have watermelon in our frig as we speak. We love here. I don’t know of to many that don’t. I also love canalope.
Watermelons!!! God’s gracious gift to all of us. My son and great grandson planted watermelons this year and were blessed with more than they could eat and give away. So now they have so many in their kitchen floor they it’s hard to get around. They learned a lesson though, don’t plant all your melons at the same time, sucession planting is the best way to go ❤
Where I grew, up Lancaster County, S.C., a lot of people grew watermelons. They were always really fresh (just of the vine). I really like them (no salt please). Dennis Morgan
I was born and grew up on the backside of Lake James, in the foothills of Dobson Knob, where we had no electricity lines and an old dirt road. We never had much luck in growing watermelons, but periodically a truck of watermelons from South Carolina would come round and my grandfather would pick several at 50 cents each. We would then put them in our spring, coming out of the mountainside, to cool. When they became cool, we had our feast. I’m now 86 but still vividly remember those lazy hazy days of summer.
Distracted last several days…but I also say that summer, watermelon, kids and outdoors are a fine recipe for lasting memories. My Dad sure thought so. In the real mountains, letting a watermelon chill in a mountain spring or creek is part of the formula.
Alas, my watermelon growing somehow never seems to.work out. They don’t grow well. When they try to.get ripe, but aren’t yet, the critters dig into them then they rot. I can’t seem to even buy one that was ripe when picked. They may be red inside but they have that “green” bite in the taste. About the best one can hope for is a sweet center inside a semi- hard rind of red. Seems every year we try to find a truly good one and every year we fail, not just once but multiple times.
I am leaning more and more toward thinking that “ripe” and “commercial” are strangers to one another.
I go way back to when my grandparents had watermelon stored in a cool mountain spring for the 4th. All his children and their children headed there for the 4th of July. The men played horseshoe, and the women caught up on the happenings. Older children watched younger children. Everybody had a wonderful time even with no electricity on their farm. Aunts and uncles brought ice cream on dry ice. The children mostly chose ice cream instead of the watermelon. We could eat all we wanted. They say dry ice is dangerous, but we liked to drop coins on it and watch the sizzle. Grimy children at end of day! We all survived childhood, and there was a big bunch of us. When apples came in Grandpa had to designate a couple of supervisors from the older children to guard the apples. It was very effective.
Nothing like a good watermelon! I like salt on mine like my dad did and even though we always grew both watermelon and cantaloupe, I just didn’t care for cantaloupe but if we did have some to eat, I would have to put black pepper on it. Daddy said I was killing the flavor of the cantaloupe, LOL.
We love watermelon as well and have had a lot this Summer. Breakfast, lunch and dinner! There is some in the fridge right now. I need to get another before we eat all of this one. When I was expecting my second child (she was born in June, in Florida) it was soooooo hot and all I wanted was watermelon. My Dad would come over to our house every few days with a big ole’ watermelon so that I would not run out.
When I was a kid , there would be some volunteer citrons that came back each year in an old garden spot.They look like a watermelon but the inside stays hard. Mother would make preserves out of insides, I don’t think they were good for anything else. I didn’t think it got any better than those preserves and hot butter homemade biscuits especially if there was some fatback gravy to go along with the biscuits. There also would always be some volunteer tomato plants at the hog pen. I have it said that deer would not eat a citron, maybe the vine but not the citron.
Randy, I’m glad to know what a citron is because when I was young and some of us kids found some when we were playing in a field, I thought they were baby watermelons. We soon found out when we tried to get one open that it was not a watermelon, so we ended up trying to play ball with them which was fine until someone got hit with one. We never did find out what they were because we didn’t want to get in trouble, now I know that was what they were. Thank you!
I was so worried my sugar babies were going to be duds this year because the vines grew and grew and grew and despite the many flowers on each vine, there wasn’t a single fruit. Then I went out of town for a week and returned to find a few small fruits finally developing. It’s still not a particularly bountiful year – I’ve got 4 vines each about 25 feet long and will probably average out to one melon per vine – but since I’ve only got one mouth to feed I’ll take what I can get. Now if they would just ripen!
I love fresh watermelon too! Her memories reminded me of my own as a child. Getting all messy from the watermelon juices, getting sprayed off with water hose and running around till we got dry. One difference was it was my mom cutting and handing out the watermelon. Good memories for sure!
There is nothing better than a good watermelon or nothing worse than bad watermelon. You all have made me hungry for some good melon.. Its time to do the “watermelon crawl.” Anyone know where a watermelon festival is?
Enjoyed the story from Jane D. O’Dell, Tipper. When growing up in the midwest, having watermelon was a treat for our family, too.
The story mentioned ‘salt’ which was totally unheard of in our family & and circle of friends to my knowledge. Later when we ended up in FL my sister and daughter both picked up that habit. As for me, even as a child, the only fruit I ate & still eat with salt was/is cantaloupe/musk melon. And it doesn’t need to be cold.
Last 2 yrs, I didn’t have the pleasure of any watermelon but last month in July, was bound & determined to change that and finally found one storebought. It was very good.
Normally in this area, we have roadside peddlers that makes runs for the border with trailers. Some find delicious melons.
But, guess my habits change. 1. Don’t usually have cash with me. 2. Have to know someone is around to carry it indoors for me. Between shoulder & back pain… Last piece was 2 or 3 weeks back when I took a chance on a bit of cut store-bought. When my daughter didn’t touch it, I ate the 2nd half. Shame. In younger days, the whole cut would have been an afternoon snack as a late lunch. I’d rather eat my water than solid food during our hot days.
I like any melon any way I can get it, especially the Orangette watermelon. The seedless varieties just don’t seem to taste as good as the ones with seeds. When I was growing up, mom and dad would load up the kids, a big watermelon, salt shaker, and knife in the back of a pickup truck and head down the road to a wide spot and have a picnic. Mom was always reminding us kids to quit eating so much salt or it was going to dry our blood up.
Over the course of a week, I’ve totally uprooted and cleaned the garden plot. With rain just about every day and cold, deer eating my stuff, my garden did not do great. Oh well, I hope I can try again next year. I wish I had fresh watermelon every day and I know you’ve enjoyed every bite! It’s so refreshing and tasty!
A good cold watermelon eaten outside on a pleasant evening is one of the hallmarks of summertime.
No luck this year with mine, but I did notice you mentioned Sugar Baby watermelon and I am assuming that is the name of your seeds. Will look them up and try planting those. Also, last nite, I watched your ‘lessons’ on the letter O…I think I have heard most of them sometime in my childhood and have used a lot of them myself. I think you have brought up so many memories every video I watch and always look forward to the next one…..and waiting for the ‘Friday’ reading today. Give my best to Granny.
I like watermelon too, but I do not eat it everyday. When growing up,, my granddaddy and I would eat watermelon everyday. I would often eat a cantaloupe too. He would always have a large patch of each one. The favorites were Charleston Gray, Congo and for my daddy Moon and Star red meat not yellow. My friend grows produce to sell and he had some of the biggest cantaloupes and watermelons this year that I have ever seen, the cantaloupes were named Durango and the watermelons were named Truck Busters. The cantaloupes were soccer ball size and some of the watermelons were around a hundred pounds. I also like salt on my watermelon and salt and a little bit of black pepper on my cantaloupe
Speaking of volunteers, I had a vine come up, I guess from seeds in the composter, and he crawled forever! Come to find out it is butternut squash, which I’ve never grown before, and been a prolific bearer this year! Having a garden is always a blessing but having seeds volunteer and produce free food is like winning the lottery! Good thing I like butternut squash! LOL
I’m very fond of watermelon too, Tip, have been all my life. There is almost always a watermelon in my fridge all summer. You probably eat more than I do but I’d come in a close second. I don’t eat it every day but about every other day through the summer when they are available.
A couple of weeks ago about 3:00 in the afternoon I decided it was time for watermelon. I had a fresh one ready to go. I chopped that melon in half and to my great disappointment it was almost all white inside. Well, I put my two halves of white watermelon in bags and headed to Peachtree where the vegetable stand is to correct this error. When I got there, there were lots of customers there along with the woman who checked me out when I bought my unripe watermelon.
I opened both of my bags to show the unripe watermelon. She helped me very quickly, not wanting everyone in the store to see the green watermelon. She rushed to the back to get it out of site then very quickly helped me pick another riper watermelon.
At home I cut my new watermelon and sat down to enjoy it! As I was eating my watermelon, I realized that I had not once considered that I could wait till the next day to return it when I went out. I just could not wait to correct things; I am serious about my watermelon!
Since your post on your Celebrating Appalachia you tube channel about how much you love watermelon (in the community section), I saw somewhere someone in a different country said they freeze watermelon juice. I thought about you when I read that. They didn’t say how they did that, and I was someplace I couldn’t write down their online info. To give to you. But, I wonder if you put the watermelon in a food processor or blender and get it slushy, if you could freeze that to use for ???, maybe making something like a lemonade type beverage?? Just a thought on how to preserve that wonderful watermelon taste for winter. I love watermelon, too. And yes, summer is not summer without watermelon juice running down your neck and arms getting you all sticky!
Donna. : )
Watemelon is the best, I buy the small round ones. They seem to have the best flavor and they eere aleays firdt at the ptoduce stand. I vuybthem into chunks putbin a covered bowl in my fridge and coult eat at will. Nevet salt, I like the melon