Rick: With watermelon mealy is definitely too ripe. They tend to get both hollow and mealy. I think the weight of the melon actually decreases. With honeydew my experience is they just get too soft. But I haven't grown nearly as many as I've grown watermelon. So I'm sure about the watermelon and less so about honeydew.

zone5a east hartford, ct. first year growing watermelons and I'm pretty happy. Growing Jubilee and we've gotten 5 so far and am hoping to get a few more although i know there is not much time left. I know they are growable in CT as I used to raid the neighbors garden in the late 60s and those tasted even better than mine. I had not had any success until this year and I attribute that at least partly to following the suggestion about digging a post hole and filling it with compost. I also feel part of my success was as a result of covering the top of the soil with about 4 inches of shredded leaf compost which kept moisture in the soil even after 5 weeks of no rain here. I didn't want to water because of reading about the sugar concentration at the end of the growing cycle. At this point, about 1/3 of my plants are showing signs of fungus but the rest of the leaves are pretty green and healthy looking. Having read in an earlier post about first year always being the best as far as growing watermelons, I am wondering if I need to move my watermelon growing spot a bit and if so, how far from current one. The compost on top of the soil thing I got from watching the documentary film Back to Eden from 2011 and there is a part of me that hopes that the same spot with new compost on top might work, but I expect the smarter people will tell me that that is not going to work. Hoping to retire maybe to Delaware so I can extend the growing season in about 2 yrs. With a bit more land than 1/4 acre and a bit more warmth, maybe I can become successful in growing more varieties!!!

First fruit are rarely the best. My first one was mealy, too, but had some flavor. I think it's just a case of being the first. You've grown some nice varieties. In a couple of weeks, you'll be in tomato heaven.

I had to respond to the below post from Mokinu even though it's five years old. I have a story that may just nail this down. I have a raised bed garden on the west side of my house. I planted some sugar lump tomatoes directly in the raised bed in August, and by Thanksgiving, I had ripe tomatoes average size was a large cherry tomato, and the plants were about 4ft and taking over. So, I cut a couple of branches (because it grew so fast), and transplanted them directly into the ground on the east side of my building sometime in November. The plant grew much faster, and the tomatoes were, on average 50% larger than the tomatoes on the donor tree, and the tree is far more productive. Also, the tomatoes had slight ridges (like they had a quick hookup with the neighboring Cherokee purple) and had a dimple on the bottom, as opposed to the perfectly round tomatoes on the donor tree. Finally around the first of February, I plucked one of these huge (compared to the donor tree), red tomatoes, and cut it open.....it was mealy! What a disappointment since the tree is loaded up with tomatoes. When I read the below post, everything from the cooler temperatures, to the inconsistent watering because of a lot of rain (I live in So Cal 10b), to the high nutrient, unbalanced nutrient(rain, and just generally much harder to control the nutrient in the ground than a raised bed), just about everything in this post describes conditions which explain how a donor tree planted at a different time, in a different location could be so different, could produce such different tomatoes, and mealy tomatoes. 5 years ago last modified: 5 years ago I have some suspicions as to factors that can contribute to mealiness:* Too much calcium and maybe also potassium during cold, wet, dim weather.* Not enough available phosphorus* The wrong kind of compost Most of the mealy tomatoes I've ever tried have come after the temperature drops, especially in more shaded areas with wet soil. Phosphorus is in higher demand when the temperature drops. Seeds don't seem to develop as well, or they go bad easier (seeds are high in phosphorus).Mealy tomatoes are typically much firmer on the outside than regular tomatoes. This seems to implicate an abundance of available calcium, potassium and/or silica. Potassium helps to improve heat-tolerance. However, I'm not entirely sure what affect it has on plants in the cold. I would be very surprised if it had no effect. Anyway, my neighbor also had mealy tomatoes without giving them extra potassium or anything. So, I'm tempted to attribute it entirely to the weather, which started out extremely hot and extremely dry (few, if any, tomatoes were mealy then) and then became quite cold and wet, and less bright (most of the tomatoes were mealy then). By extremely hot, I mean up to 116° F. By extremely dry, I mean it didn't really rain (maybe a little a couple times), and I was pretty much dry farming them from mid to late summer. By cold I mean, between about 33-60° F. By wet, I mean, a fair amount of rain every day or two, with constantly mud-colored soil. Anyway, these are just some thoughts for experimentation that should be quite testable. I'm not claiming that anything in particular definitely causes mealiness. The red tomato on the string is from the donor tree, and of course the green one got about 30-40% larger before I picked it, and it was mealy. FYI, there will be Creamy Tomato Bisque later this month.