Watermelons

[down_home]

Been laied up with knee replacement. Haven't been shopping. Don't want the Mexico stuff.
When do the good big canteloupes, and good old fashioned big watermelons appear, in north Alabama/South Tn....and real sweet corn not the new stuff they pass off as bicolor sweet?
It's gmo and I don't care for it.
Fourth is just next week. Hoping to have a crowd.

[D_E_Bishop]

My DOD(Dear old Dad) was born and raised on a farm in Pomona CA and he could tell what strain of corn an ear of corn was by looking at the number of rows and the smell of an ear. He taught me not about corn but about "thumping" melons.

Sure wish I had paid more attention to the corn thing. I have found that Trader Jo's corn is one of the best tasting we can buy here. It isn't pretty, husks aren't perfectly green, not all ears are identical and the kernels are all one color. We see lots of corn for sale here all year long but TJ's only has corn about three months a year, just like the old days. Cost starts out high and tapers off and then get high again Corn at Von's or Kroger is almost always the same and available all year long.

The old Irvine Ranch in Orange County had peaches and tangerines that were ripe and full of flavor, now it is a housing subdivision. We have been to Harry and David's in Medford OR at the end of peach season. They have huge field boxes of peach culls at like $0.10 apiece. Great to make ice cream and jam from.

Miss the good old days but I have outlived almost my entire family back to the Great, Greats. A trade off I guess.

[Jim_Shoe]

I live in the Cincinnati area. Any roadside stands that are open now are selling product that was harvested green and "ripened" with grow lights.
I was headed north on I-95 several years ago in March. I never saw the truck, but he apparently lost a few crates of oranges. They were green as gourds and some had rolled for several miles before getting run over.

[happybooker1]

Travel towards Hempstead Texas. Many many old farmers grow watermelons and then park on the side of the highways & sell out of the back of their pickups. Find a shady tree--you'll find a parked truck & home grown 'melons!

[SWMO]

In the 60's I had to make bi-weekly run to SW Oklahoma in the area where watermelon was grown. There were honer stands everywhere and stocked with the smaller melons priced at 3 for a $1, with the more normal size $1 a piece.

GMO's? What they don't tell you is that not all are hybridized against just insects, they are also immune to many herbicides. That allows them to be drenched in it freely. What effect that will have on us isn't known, but I doubt it will be good. Between food heavy in insecticide and herbicide residue, the import of diseases without cures once confined by isolation we are our own worse enemy. I worry about my grand kids future. My biggest worry was Polio, but that was short lived, and getting the measles and chicken pox quickly to get them out of the way.

[down_home]

Strawberries? I wish I had some, not the imitation oversized, hollow, in the middle, kinda vinegary, really pale and some what resembling cardboard in flavor.
My Aunt had a kitchen garden with a large patch of berries. Fresh strawberries in fresh cream. huuuuuum. these new things would be a waste of food cream, if you could find any. The smell went all over the house. Shortcakes and strawberries. Makes my stomach all atwitter with expectation of delicious delight. Got to make real shortcakes, with lard and have real strawberries. Every time I buy strawberries fall for the advertising hype of heritage and so on. Invariably they are the junk they have every where. Bought some at Lowes, last year and put in planters. Supposedly heritage. The taste is the familiar California shippers junk.
When I was in early teens I brought back one hundred Tennessee Beauties from Uncle's Father in Law's farm. The second year and thereafter we had so many berries and new plants that Mama bought canning jars several times. We had strawberries at every meal for a while. Dad dug them up while I was in Nam. Sacrilage. Why?
Cantaloupes. A good cantaloupe envelops all the senses and will give everybody in the house, including the front porch diabetes just from the smell.
Watermelons. when we hear the slick as the knife bit through the rind we all cam running. Sweet watermellon and all over the house. Had to watch we didn't eat the rind. It had it's own flavor but at a cost.
Hard to find the good stuff today. When i stayed on the farm, in Indiana, I watched them harvest mellons. The biggest were like 1.25 but were near 100 lbs maybe. .75 got one big enough for two families. And they everyone were watermellon not shipper's specials of 5.00 for a 5 lb mini mellon or imitation mellon. Peach ice cream? Why do the insit on using unripened cling peaches. The Georgia Belles and so on are so sweet an falvorful you have to cut back on the sugar.
I'm hongry.

[Jerrybo66]

I agree with Down Home about the big old fashion watermelons. I stopped buying them because they are all seedless . Seedless, I think, are tasteless. I bought a seeded one, about the size of a soccer ball and fed it to the squirrels. I guess maybe the younger generation, who never tasted a fresh picked Baldwin apple or a Sickle pear doesn't know that "genetically improved" fruit has not much flavor but they all sure do look perfect. Tomatoes, same deal. I sure miss the Mariglobes I used to grow. Perfect appearance isn't cheap either, I saw peaches for $3.50#. I figure that's about a buck each.
One veggie they did do a good genic job on is corn. The "sugar Enhanced" strains are a great improvement over the old Cross Bantams etc. It would be reassuring though to find a worm in one once in a while. :).

[Gonzo42]

Learned from my grandfather on his Kansas farm in '47 how to thump watermelons. I have about a 95& success rate.

We like ours with chili powder on them.

[fla-gypsy]

We already have ripe watermelon in Florida. To those who think they can avoid GMO produce your kidding yourself by believing the marketing of a shrewd seller

[Super_Dave]

Back in the day, I could pick out a good melon with sugar blisters but haven't seen any with those in a long time. Now I'm just reduced to guessing and I'm apparently not good at it.

[SWMO]

Double post.

[SWMO]

Super_Dave wrote:
I can't buy a good watermelon anymore to save my behind. I'm tired of paying higher prices for unripe or over ripe watermelons so I've just quit. 😞

We don't have that here, but what we generally have available are hybrid varieties that lack sweetness and flavor. Occasionally during the summer we see trucks with Black Diamonds or Charleston Greys for sale. They haul them from small farms in Texas and Oklahoma.

[coolbreeze01]

Bought a tasty Yosemite Fresh melon at Winco yesterday.

[Super_Dave]

I can't buy a good watermelon anymore to save my behind. I'm tired of paying higher prices for unripe or over ripe watermelons so I've just quit. 😞

[NYCgrrl]

SWMO wrote:
ammdasgranmma that's the way it is today. The old standbys of corn, melons, etc either didn't stand up well to shipping or didn't look pretty. The old c antelopes we got when I was a kid were very sweet, grown locally in the bottoms and flat ugly to look at. The Black Diamond water melons were too big and too hard to ship, the corn was sweet, but tended not to have kernels all the way to the end consistently and the list goes on. Today it is more about shipping, eye appeal, resistance, and yields and flavor isn't very high on the list.

'xactly.
Strawberries that ship well, look uniformly pretty but taste like so much cotton. Taters with no dirt and not much mouth feel starch either.

I'll pay more for that "old fashioned" taste yet as amandagrandma noted you still have to be wary and know the code words or it's just another unfulfilled Madison Avenue moment. Thanks for the Black Diamond name, SWMO. It's the other "snake" name...yeah that's how I play word association games to try to 'member no longer everyday named stuff:B.