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Post by templeton on Sept 1, 2015 3:38:06 GMT -5
All this talk of melons has me itching to sow, probably at least another month, yet.
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Post by philip on Sept 4, 2015 15:39:06 GMT -5
 watermelon harvest. I couldn't help my curiosity and kept harvesting some fruit over the last three weeks. They were mostly not fully ripe but all juicy and refreshing with very little sweetness or aroma. Today i harvested all the remaining fruit because we're going to do a watermelon tasting tomorrow. The varieties are from left to right: 2 early moonbeam 1 sweet siberian 1 cream of saskatchewan 1 olga's beauty 2 early canada 1 blacktail mountain The best one for vigour and fruit production was by far early canada followed by cream of katchvestan and sweet siberian then early moonbeam and the worst were olga's beauty and blacktail mountain. We will compare them all for taste tomorrow. It's been a huge success anyways cause i managed to grow watermelons outside. Hopefully some of them will taste nice and have ripe seeds. On the melon front the absolute winner is Blenheim Orange. Close to 15 melons on one plant and all really nice tasting and juicy whereas all the other varieties so far are hit and miss with the odd good one. Petit gris de Rennes is not ripe yet though and the leaves are still fairly green. Blenheim Orange made more, bigger and tastier melons than Farthest North and all the other varieties. The big difference was aswell that all the underripe BO's ripened inside and were really good whereas as the underripe Lunéville's and others (except Farthest North) did not ripen more indoors and were bland. I used Blenheim Orange seed from last years melons so maybe they crossed and i just had a lucky hybrid combination!? Anyhow BO will get a high percentage in next years plot and most others will be discontinued since i have loads of new varieties for next year. I think this year was a pretty bad year weatherwise so we'll hope for a better summer in 2016 |
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Post by steev on Sept 4, 2015 19:23:53 GMT -5
Early Canada is very pretty; got a photo of its innerds?
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Post by philip on Sept 5, 2015 8:46:52 GMT -5
Early canada is red-fleshed. The red would surely be deeper and going closer to the rind had it been grown in a warmer climate. But the seeds are nice and dark so that's great.  |
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Post by philip on Sept 5, 2015 12:33:52 GMT -5
So overall opinion was something like this: 1)sweet siberian / cream of saskatchewan 2) early moonbeam 3) olga's beauty / early canada / blacktail mountain Notice that my blacktail mountain is yellow-fleshed so it definitely crossed with early moonbeam last year. The yellow flesh colour seems to be a dominant trait. I seem to remember having read that most of joseph's melons are yellow. Maybe it's just coincidence but the lighter coloured ones were the best tasting.  |
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Post by philagardener on Sept 5, 2015 14:06:13 GMT -5
Looks fabulous - we'll be right over  |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 5, 2015 23:07:51 GMT -5
I seem to remember having read that most of joseph's melons are yellow. Maybe it's just coincidence but the lighter coloured ones were the best tasting. Once I figured out that yellow-fleshed watermelons taste better to me I mostly stopped planting red-fleshed melons, unless they have a trait That I'd like to incorporate into the population. |
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Post by philip on Sept 8, 2015 4:03:30 GMT -5
 Most of the plants are now wilting away but some are still green and growing. These are interesting to me because they are later-ripening varieties and offer the possibility of extending the season. They are Kazakhstan, Petit gris de rennes and Irina's Sweet  This is Irina's sweet. A spanish type melon. Usually yellow and rugby shaped. I harvested one in the tunnel that was overripe when it detached itself. All melons are different so this one doesn't seem to smell and may need to be harvested before it comes off the vine by itself. It it is able to ripen indoors it will be a winner.  |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 16, 2015 20:46:30 GMT -5
 One very ripe red fleshed watermelon harvested today (because it split open), and one ripe yellow watermelon (harvested yesterday because of slight bird damage (was nearly ripe when harvested). Thanks for the seeds Joseph! |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 23, 2015 12:06:09 GMT -5
Sorry I didn't take pictures, but I've been harvesting more small watermelons. Ironically this year the reds tasted much better than the yellow ones. Although one yellow was pretty good. These are from Joseph's stock, so I'm not exactly sure what exactly happens when he selects. But one posible explanation is that there are two types of yellow that I've encountered. The less-bright yellows (salmon-yellow?) taste poor to me, but I like the bright canary yellows. This population seems to have quite a few of the muted yellows. Just a thought. Still a better turn out than I thought, and I'm quite pleased with some of the ripe reds I got this year! I think I'm getting better at picking them at the right time too. I've been combining the thump method (which is less reliable with small melons) and the 5 tendril method I came up with. Basically look for dry tendrils up and down the vine. If several tendrils are dry then a greater chance of a ripe one. Also looking for yellow spots and splitting, etc. If you don't want your red seeds anymore Joseph I'll gladly take them!  I do like the selection pressures into small black seeds. Those are pleasing to me. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 23, 2015 20:16:14 GMT -5
My best guess on the salmon-yellow watermelons is that they have both a yellow gene and a red gene, and neither one is fully dominant, so the melons end up part way between yellow and red: Often with the colors swirled together.
This year I selected for yellow melons only, except that I selected for one tangerine, and I kept seeds separate for some of the Charleston Gray, and for some hybrids between yellow fleshed melons and CG.
In previous years, I have mostly been selecting for mature seeds and for earliness. This year in addition to those criteria, I taste tested every melon. The watermelons are finally producing reliably enough that I can focus more heavily on a luxury like flavor.
I decided that I know very little about picking ripe melons... It's just way hard to find a reliable indicator in a genetically diverse population. I hope that I remember the 'dry tendrils up and down the vine' criteria.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Sept 23, 2015 22:23:27 GMT -5
Here is a photo of the supposed salmon yellow. To be fair i think i may have misidentified it and judged it too early. near the outside it was this dull yellow color with a faint hint of some darker color. It tasted slightly unripe. But when i dug into it deeper it actually appeared more of an orange color. So it actually might just have been an unripe orange watermelon. Deeper with the orange color it actually tasted pretty good. Good enough that i decided to save seeds from it after all. Plus it was one of the biggest, so i figure it might have other genetics i might want to save. It doesn't show signs of swirling, so i'm more prone to think it's your tangerine fleshed Joseph Lofthouse and not a half red half yellow, but idk. But yeah, i was pleasantly surprised at the taste of some of the red fleshed this year that i'm applauding your efforts! This is finally starting to have some worthwhile genetics that are working for my climate and my conditions. Not an easy task for a watermelon! Yeah, i think I've definitely improved at that this year. I'm still not perfect at it, but getting better. One i just had a feeling that it wasn't ripe yet but cut into anyway, and it wasn't, but still good enough to eat, so i ate it and saved seeds. But yeah, i wish they had some sort of smell like muskmelons do when ripe, but they just smell like dirt or a watermelon rind. Those yellow skinned melons would be handy if you ever manage to breed that into your line. One idea i tried too was to keep the unripe picked ones around on the table with plastic wrap. The watermelons didn't really ripen to eat later, but it helped give me an estimation of when the ones still in the field might be ripe. 
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Post by ferdzy on Sept 27, 2015 19:29:48 GMT -5
We've been picking and eating watermelons for the last 2 weeks, with more to go. But if I haven't picked it yet, it's going to have a hard time justifying itself as an "early" melon for next year. The winners so far:  Really early! I think our second H2Omelon of the season, and at 10 to 12 pounds our second largest thus far. Also tasted terrific. I believe it's a cross between Orangeglo and Crimson Sweet. It was supposed to be Orangeglo. Oh well. No complaints.  This is our largest H2Omelon, at 15.6 pounds. It's a cross, as far as I can tell, between Orangeglo and Sweet Siberian. That is one of the specific crosses that I wanted to make, so I am chuffed. Now that I have it though, I guess I will find out next year what it has now crossed with... oh well. Two out of our 5 person tasting panel don't actually like watermelon all that much, but they both really liked this. It was indeed very good.  And this li'l sweetie was my other holy grail. I've been selecting heavily for Golden Midget in my "landrace" watermelons, because I want that golden ripening gene. It's recessive, so I had to have it coming in from both sides in the f2; I believe I read somewhere odds of 1 in 64. There it is! Looks like Golden Midget x Crimson Sweet to me. Don't know what it has crossed with for next year, but there's a ton of Golden Midget genes in my pool, so I am ever hopeful. |
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Post by philagardener on Sept 27, 2015 19:44:50 GMT -5
Those all look really nice, ferdzy ! Do you have other seeds set aside from that original Orangeglo x Sweet Siberian fruit that you could grow out and bag next year (since this one was OP)? |
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Post by ferdzy on Sept 27, 2015 19:55:31 GMT -5
philagardener, the short answer is yes, I do. The longer answer is I have at least 4 packets of saved Orangeglo seeds from the previous year... and I'm not sure which package that would have been. I didn't keep that close track of what I planted. Ho hum. I might try to figure it out. (Which ones have been cracked open. Might give me a clue... I don't think I planted from all 4 of them.)
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