My Watermelon Farmer

 My son Aaron loves watermelons! When we are grocery shopping that would be nearly the only thing he would be likely to ask me to buy. I am not quick to buy watermelons, however as most we see are not organic and so they tend to soak up toxins and not have a ton of good in them for you.  So when we do happen to get one or somebody else serves him one he gets pretty excited.

  Because of his love for watermelons Aaron decided to grow some this year. I had a couple of different types of seeds for hardy watermelons (I remember one was MN Midget) and I gave him his own spot in the garden to plant them in. He planted them, watched carefully for them, watered them (though nothing else in the garden got watered) and waited excitedly for the day that they would be ready.

 His impatience did cause for a couple of unripe watermelons being cut into. The thing is there had been this little bitty watermelon that was ripe and had split open so then Aaron figured that surely the bigger ones would be ripe - they made a good hollow thumping sound too - but alas, they weren't. They didn't taste that bad though so part of it was eaten anyway.

  He picked those two unripe ones and then declared that no more would be picked until frost (though he did break that for his Dad's birthday on October 1st and that watermelon was good). We have had some chilly nights but no killing frost yet. Tonight looks like it possibly could be the night so Aaron picked his watermelons - all of them. I have a counter full.

We ate a lovely watermelon for supper tonight. Aaron has dutifully been saving seeds from his ripe melons and hopes to have a very large crop next year.

 He has decided to get full use out of them we had better try making watermelon rind pickles so that is on the agenda for tomorrow. I have never made them before but I remember liking them when they were brought to potlucks when I was a child.

This is a picture from earlier in the season. The watermelons are so cute.

 So you have any uses for watermelons beyond the normal eating of them? I would love to hear. Also I imagine we do have more unripe ones among the ones he picked - does anybody have any suggestions for using them?