The suggestions all of you posted pretty much covers what we do here. Check to see if the tendril nearest the stem is dead, AND the two tendrils directly left and right of the stem. Check the bottom of the melon for yellowness. Push on the melon a bit to hear it crack inside. This is hard to do but when you actually do hear it crack it is a sure sign. Thumping on the melon I found it to be mainly a sign of how crisp the melon is - how fresh. Not much of an indicator of when ripe, but if it is overripe. Another good thing to check ripeness AFTER the melon is picked is to check for syrup coming out of the stem. If you see this dark sticky substance oozing out, you have a real yummy one there! We have also found that certain varieties do not work well with the tendril technique. If you are having problems I'd just wait a week or so after the tendril dies and then pick the finicky watermelon. However, we have never gotten those hard to tell melons again just because of that. We stick to the best all around: Crimson Sweet! Wow, what a winner! As for musk melons we always look for the overall tan/ yellow color of the outer rind, the more corky it looks the better, and how easy it is for the stem to be pulled off.

For me, I like my apples a bit tart. By the time they start dropping, I've missed some of the tarter side of my range. In the beginning, when I didn't have enough apples to experiment on (to cut it open and look for dark seeds), I'd use a pretty comprehensive apple ripening chart, such as the one below. Look for the date on there that Red Delicious is ripe. Then look up a local UPick in your area, and see when their RD is ripe so you can come up with an offset. Next, look up your varieties and see when they ripen compared with RD (often they'll say something like '3 weeks after Red Delicious') Finally, call the UPick and find out if they're running a little early or late this year. With all that info, using the relative offsets, you can come up with a pretty accurate range. Gee, that's a lot of work. Just cut them open and look for when the seeds start to go dark :-) -Glenn Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.pickyourown.org/apples.htm

Thanks everyone! I probably did everything wrong with these but somehow they survived the summer in my care. The containers are all from Costco. The aqua colored ones are big glazed stoneware containers that were sold for about $40 each last year during the spring. The Costco stores around Texas had their garden sections piled high with them. The terra cotta container is also an imported Italian one from Costco. They were selling for around $11 last year. I also use them for potted tomatos. I potted my citrus in a mix of equal parts peat, pinebark mulch, composted cow manure, and sand with gravel in the bottom covered by landscape cloth to provide better drainage. I have them on the same drip irrigation line as my tomatos and they get about 15 minutes of drippage every morning. I bought some citrus stakes (the hard fertilizer stakes) and pounded one in each each container for fertilizer. And then I haven't bothered to pay any attention to them since May. Before the first frost I'll probably roll them into the garage and set them in a row along the south wall of the garage which has windows. Last year we only had two frosts here in the Waco area, one in January and one in March. But you just never know.

Yes, its an elderberry. Ideally, you pick them when all of them on the cluster have turned dark and ripe, but if the birds are taking them you can pick them a little earlier when just most of them have ripened, and just don't use the green ones. If you wait too long, they'll fall off and be lost.