I always used to think, "more seeds, more flavor", but I had a really sweet and flavorful seedless watermelon this summer (because that's all the stores have been selling around here).

Still, I do hunger for a good ol' Black Diamond. Even though I'm sure there are better ones out there now, that was the best melon you could buy during my growing up days. We had a conversation about melons in a previous post and somebody said their dad always called them "Yellow Belly Black Diamond". I had to laugh when I went to Baker Creek Seed, and there they were on the list, "Yellow Belly" in the title and all.

I'm growing Moon and Stars this fall, and I have several on the vine but none ripe. I hear it's very sweet, is an old heirloom that almost disappeared until some gardener in Missouri was discovered to have the seed.

Other than that, I leave the rest of the discussion up to the more experienced gardeners.

Ilene, My favorite watermelon is also Black Diamond but they are certainly not little. I have seeds for Moon and Stars to try next year so I will be anxious to see how you like it. I think that was Dawn's dad that grew "yellow belly", and I also saw that in the Willhite catalog. My dad just grew plain old Black Diamond and Charleston Grey. Funny, my dad wasn't a gardener, but he grew the watermelons. Farmer vs gardener mentality, I guess.

I grew Blacktail Mountains this year. They are tasty if you eat the heart out like a coyote and leave the rest, but in my opinion way too seedy! They are indeed a long keeping storage melon and very small and compact. Next year, I will be growing very few of them for earliness and possibly long storage. Other than that, I'll be going back to the drawing board looking for larger, tried and true melons that are very red and sweet that don't have thousands of seeds.

Barbara

Quailhunter,

For compact melons, you can't go wrong with Sugar Baby, Bush Sugar Baby, Blacktail Mountain or Yellow Doll. They all taste very good. I like Blacktail Mountain's flavor the best of all the compact ones, so I don't mind the seeds. There are lots of other good melons out there, but they generally aren't as compact as the ones I mentioned above.

I've linked Willhite Seed's melon section below. They specialize in melons and udoubtedly will have a few more compact ones than those that I mentioned. I think they usually have Mickeylee and Sugarlee which are small, Tendergold which is larger but luscious, and Raspa, which is also a larger melon but a very productive and very tasty one.

Ilene and Carol, I do think Black Diamonds are about the best melons you can buy....especially if you can find some that are locally grown and haven't been shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. Yum yum. My dad always stopped and bought his Black Diamonds from farmers who'd drive into Fort Worth with a pick-up truck load, and you knew it was an authentic farmer who'd grown them himself....there he'd be in his cotton shirt, overalls, straw hat and workboots. Nowadays, half the time at the farmer's markets, the 'farmers' often don't look like they've ever stepped foot in a field.

Moon and Stars is another one Daddy and his family grew when he was a kid. He told me in the 1970s or 1980s that you couldn't get seeds of it any more, so you can imagine how happy I was when I found seeds of it in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog in the 1990s. All this talk of Black Diamond Yellow Belly is making me want to grow one next year, even though it undoubtedly would take up all m melon area all by itself.

Here is a link that might be useful: Willhite Seed Company's Watermelon Section

Dawn - HeeHee - When I ordered from Willhite, I couldn't resist and bought some Black Diamond seed. I bought the very smallest package of seed they had and I don't have a clue where I will put it. I will have to try a vine or two though, so I may be growing it in a pot and running it on the grass. I don't think I can go vertical with those as I think they would be a little heavy for a sling. LOL

I can share my tiny pack with you if you want plain old black diamond, but I didn't get the yellow belly one.

Each of my kids planted one type melon this year. My oldest son chose Black Diamond. He had three plants. From those plants there have been 3 between 30 and 35 lbs and 5 more between 15 and 20 or so lbs. We have picked two of the big ones, but the first was not close to fully ripe and the second was rotten because we tried to "plug" it a couple of days before picking it to make sure it was ripe. It looked close so I left it a couple of days so we could finish up some others. We got all the rain during those two days and it rotted. Sometimes I am not very smart. He was heartbroken. Now I have one chance left. The last big one looks and sounds almost ready, but I am gun-shy.

One other son grew Sugar Baby. We got 5 from his 3 plants and 4 of the 5 were just right. Good taste, but too much work growing them for the tiny "heart". I am spiled from my days as a kid growing enough so we could eat the heart and discard the rest.

Two years ago I had a volunteer watermelon grow in a vacant flower bed and I let it take the bed over. It made just one melon (striped) which I watered every other day, and it was 36 lbs and great. This year I had 2 plants grow in the mulch under one very young pecans tree, and two under another. They all resemble Black Diamond. One place has 5 melons of about 10-18 lbs, and the other has 2 melons that are between 30 and 35 lbs. I haven't picked any of them. I only watered them one time. That is a great example to remind me how a think layer of mulch conserves water fot the plants.

Carol,

Thanks for offering to share the seed, but as I think you already suspect, I'm going to go with Yellow Belly as a reminder of my dad.

Scott,

The difference between plants with/without mulch is astronomical. Not only does the soil stay more moist, but significantly cooler too and I think it does make a real difference in how the plants handle the heat.

I hope that last melon is perfect so your son will not be disappointed once again.

Dawn

While I have by no means grew every watermelon out there. I will list a dozen I have grown over the years and list thim in order of best to last.
1 Jubilee (Refined flesh and sugar sweet)
2 Kleckleys Sweet Really Sweet but don't store well)
3 Crimson Sweet (Reliably sweet almost to sweet for me)
4 Charlston Grey (Old stand by for a pinker meat)
5 Mountain Hoosier (Best tasting Big Melon to Me)
6 Black Diamond with whatever belly(Grandads melon, Coarser meat red and sweet)
7 Georgia Rattlesnake(Never grew a bad one of these
8 Garrison (Nice old skool)
9 Dixie Queen(Heavy dependable Producer
10 Dixie Lee (one of the best tasting small round melon)
11 Sangria ( really dependable, Heavy producing nice newer style reverse color stripe)
12 Tom Watson Grandaddy olblong dark green
These are all I have experience with and all were good. I found It funny after looking at my list, that my Favorite Jubilee, has #2,#7 and #8 in its breeding along with Iopride and african8 which I have'nt tried yet. I guess this kinda rats me out as liking a 30-40 pound green striped, dark red meat melon. I remember as a kid eating a giant long 1/4 slice with juice all over my shirt at family gatherings on the river with a large ice cold melon. It was a better world about 30 years ago.

Quailhunter -

I saw your question to me in the "Um... oops" thread about what kind of watermelons I was raising, but I thought I'd answer here so you could keep all your watermelon info in one thread.

Most of my watermelons are volunteers so I'm not quite sure what kind they are. Last summer we ate a lot of watermelons and I convinced my mother to start a compost bin. This spring she brought over the compost and dumped it in one of my flower beds. In a few weeks, I had dozens of watermelon sprouts. I transplanted them around my place and they survived. Also, Dawn had sent me seeds for Black Tail Mountain and Criss Cross. Between her seeds and my volunteers, at one point I counted and had 40 plants.

At this point, most of the plants have grown together so I have trouble telling what's coming from where even if I knew what they were. I have the following types:

1. Black tail mountain - these are easy to identify because they're small and dark green with darker green, almost black, stripes. I've eaten two or three and none were fully ripe. Actually, out of the five or six watermelons I've cracked open, I have yet to get one that's dark red and fully ripe. My grandfather said the ones I gave him were perfect, though. Anyway, the black tails I ate were sweet at the core despite being not quite done. They had a lot of seeds, but to me it seemed like the same number as a full sized watermelon. It's just the seeds were very small, like the melon! I've found that if you cut the melon longways, you can scoop out all the seeds at once very easily, which is fine for a small melon like a black tail that you intend to eat all in one sitting. I'd grow these if I had a limited area or lived alone and wanted melons I could eat in a sitting. Two of these that I've eaten have been eaten just sitting out next to the melon patch with a pocket knife.

2. Criss cross - I have at least two plants of this, but have yet to get a fruit. I picked one and it dropped on the ground before I got in and it was totally unripe anyway. All white on the inside. The rind is light green with dark green stripes and it's round, volleyball sized. I have two fruit left, one of which has been savaged by a coyote and might not make it.

3. Black diamond - or so I suspect. That's what my grandfather said they looked like. Solid dark green rind that gets a light sheen of yellow/gold when ripe. I had one that must have been 35-45 pounds that I gave to a neighbor for their son's birthday party. I have 20-30 of these plants around and they're doing fine. I've eaten four or five of them. They taste very good, even if not perfectly ripe. The watermelon jelly was made from them. Big seeds. I'll be pleased if they're open pollinated. Does anyone know? I will save some seeds from them to plant next year. They're a bit big, but I have two kids who like watermelon and I like it too and it makes an impressive gift to give relatives and friends.

4. Gibson's Grey - or at least that's what my grandfather called it. It's an oblong, light green melon with a faint tracery of darker green netting-coloration. I have two or three plants (at least I have three big fruits) and I haven't picked one yet but I'll get one later this week because it has a blemish on the bottom that's starting to rot.

5. Mystery melon - I also have an oblong melon that's light green with dark green stripes. It has the perfect imprint of a coyote's teeth on it, top and bottom, but the critter couldn't get it open or get away with it. It's probably 20-30 pounds right now and should be getting ripe soon. I only have one of these and haven't eaten one.

I have had no insect problems on any melons, no particular issues with drought, fungus, splitting, etc. I've had some coyote problems and a lot of issues with figuring out when they're ripe. This is only my first time to grow watermelons. Previously, I lived with a tiny, tiny garden area in St. Paul, with a short growing season coupled with no space. So I never tried watermelons.

It seems to me that I'm only getting 1.5 melons per plant, but even now I have new melons forming and growing so maybe by the end of the season I'll have 2 or 3 per plant. Or perhaps I'm not tending them right. I haven't watered my watermelons since the end of June. Partly this is because I no longer have the hoses to reach them, but also I've just been letting them suffer because I'm cheap and it seems like they won't die if I neglect them a little on the water front. I haven't given them fertilizer or sprayed them with bug spray. I did till in tons of horse manure and bedding a couple months before planting where about half the watermelons are. The other half seems to be doing just as well though. Most of the plants are very well mulched.

Make of this what you will. Good luck!

(and if you're around the NE area, you can stop by and I'll give you all the seeds you want. They're probably Black Diamond, but no guarantees. :) )

Game bird,

All three strains of Black Diamond are open-pollinated as far as I know....including the original Black Diamond, Yellow-Fleshed Black Diamond, and Yellow Belly Black Diamond. These are the melons everyone grew when I was a kid growing up in Texas. Well, there were others, but we preferred the Black Diamonds.

Dawn

gamebird- Its been my experience that when the wildlife go after a certain type they are trying to tell you something. A coyote is the Keenest nose in North America(Don't Believe me try trapping one. Better clean up your act.They can smell the steel buried in the ground. What that doggie is telling you is he can smell the sweetness coming out of those melons and he naturally prefers the sweeter ones. I would not doubt if in the end your criss cross and your Mystery melon are going to be the best.

Scott,

I have been a really bad judge of watermelon ripeness, for about 20 years. But this year I think I've finally gotten it figured out. Of course, since 1985 I've not grown them more than about five times, and that, always white seeded Moon & Stars. Anyway, if you examine the vine where the melon is attached, find the tendril which is closest to the melon. When it dries and browns, the melon is ready. At least that's what I've discovered.

George

My grandfather told me to look for three things to figure ripeness:
1. Tendril ("squirrel") dried up.
2. Yellow or white patch on the bottom where it touches the ground.
3. Hollow sound.

I'll add to that Dawn's recommendations of size and DTM, for those varieties that you have such information. I'm not in the situation where that would be useful for me, so I'm using the three above. That's given me a melon that was white-fleshed all the way through, so it's not always on the nose.

Speaking of noses, I agree the coyotes are likely onto something. But the same night they savaged the criss cross and mystery melon, they also "picked" an immature acorn squash that was no good to anyone and chewed on it a bit. Maybe they were just goofing around. I haven't had much depredation since then, but I've scattered a lot of human hair around the edges and I'm being very careful to pick the muskmelons as soon as they turn color and let them finish turning inside my house.

Well great....A lot of help you guys are. I was looking for that perfect seedless or few seeded watermelon that gets really big and tastes perfect and grows on a compact plant. Seriously, thanks for the replies. I have the room for a big one, I just don't like the idea of a 10' wide spot taken up in my garden. We'll see, maybe I'll have quite a bit of space left over next spring when I start planting. Thanks again for everyone's help.