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Let's have a little bit of summer feeling at the end of November, shall we?! With organic homegrown Canadian watermelon that's surely going to happen! 'I CARRIED A WATERMELON ' Not what you expected at this time of the year, right?! We woke up to -10C this morning but here we are, posting about watermelon that we enjoyed for breakfast.
When we shared this post on Facebook it started an interesting discussion about the looks of this particular watermelon (We're not sure, what variety it is). Many said that it looks 'nasty' and 'not edible'. We agree that it might not meet the common idea of how a watermelon should look like, but it's actually tasty and very sweet!
Here's the whole STORY:
This watermelon was the last reminder of fresh fruit and veggies from the summer of 2021. It's actually been GROWN IN HAWKESBURY (ONTARIO)! Unfortunately not in our garden, since our cucurbits didn't do too well this year. We want to honor the amazing watermelon success of our best of all neighbors Greg! He grew an incredible yield of melons of an impressive size this summer. In fact he grew more than they could master to eat. We were actually pretty surprised about how well watermelons can do in our climate. No greenhouse involved!
That shows that choosing the RIGHT VARIETIES, a bit of lust for ADVENTURE and the ENCOURAGEMENT to try new things mostly pay off in gardening. So what are you going to do next summer in Eastern Ontario? Correct: Grow watermelons! Recommended varieties with a relatively short 'time to maturity' for our region are: Mountain Sweet and Early Canada Watermelon, both available at Greta's Organic Garden Don't miss starting melon seeds in May 2022!
Until then we have to continue dreaming of summer...
...and think about how we got used to the looks, tastes and sizes of fruit and vegetables available to us today. Watermelons iare just one example of how much crops got changed by us humans to meet our expectations.
This is a painting by Giovanni Stanchi (17th century) (source) and it shows clearly, that the inner part of this watermelon looks nothing like what we are used to, right?!
For everyone who's interested, this is quite an interesting article that shows how different watermelons looked in the 17th century. We're all pretty influenced by the looks of fruit and vegetables we get offered by the grocery stores nowadays. Heirloom varieties might still look closer to their original form. So don't judge too quickly and give the unusual things a chance 😉
Stay curious and Happy Gardening!
Ines
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