Bre, I have watermelons on the following vines: Yellow Doll, Yellow Baby, Tiger Baby, and New Orchid. Only one variety that was planted in May and is blooming now hasn't formed any melons yet, and it is Harvest Moon, a 2013 AAS winner that will produce seedless triploid melons similar to, but smaller than, Moon and Stars. The most productive watermelon vine has 3 fruits on it, ranging in size from golfball size to softball size, and it is an Orchid Baby plant. One plant has only 1 melon so far, but that melon is the size of a cantaloupe.

Except for Harvest Moon, all the melons I planted are refrigerator-sized melons, so they produce fruit in the 6 to 8 pound range. We like them because they produce ripe fruit early (65-75-days for most of them) and they produce over a pretty long period of time. They are the perfect size for us to eat in one day without having half a leftover watermelon left sitting in the fridge for the next day. Last year most of our refrigerator melon plants produced 6 to 9 or even 10 or 11 fruit per plant, though they are said to produce 3 to 6 per plant. If you can keep them healthy over the long summer, they set fruit almost nonstop in July and August.

This is our first year to grow Harvest Moon, but we've always liked Moon and Stars, so we pretty much know what to expect from it. As a bonus, it will produce fruit more quickly than Moon and Stars does.

I just sowed seed last week of Yellow Belly Black Diamond to fill in an empty spot that remained after we harvested the first 2 of our 5 varieties of sweet corn that we're growing this year. Since we just sowed the seed, we likely won't harvest a Black Diamond until fall. YBBD was one of my dad's favorite watermelons when I was a kid, so I always grow it for sentimental reasons, but it also has superb flavor. I also sowed seed of Hime Kansen, a popular variety in Japan, late since it went into the ground to replace all the broccoli and cabbage plants after they were done, so it likely won't produce until fall either.

I almost always grow my refrigerator watermelons on trellises, which is one advantage of growing the refrigerator types. I used to make slings for them using knee-high stockings (and for cantaloupes/muskmelons as well), but one year I didn't, and the melons hung on to the vines just fine. Because I have a thick bed of mulch on the ground beneath them, when a muskmelon slips off the vine and falls to the ground, it doesn't crack. Having learned they didn't need the support of the knee-high stockings, I stopped using them.

In a normal year, my melons will set fruit heavily in June and, and sometimes even start setting fruit late in May, and they will continue to set fruit all summer as long as they receive adequate moisture to promote good growth. We generally harvest watermelons from July through September or October. Even though 2011 and 2012 were horrendously hot and dry, we had our best melon year since 2004. We never have a bad watermelon year, so it is just a matter of how good of a year it is...good, better, best, best-ever, etc.

My melons keep themselves up off the ground naturally since they are on trellises. If I have one set a fruit low to the ground, I usually stick an upside-down berry basket or something underneath it.

There are several ways the melons will show they are ready. First, the little tendril on the vine that is closest to the melon will from green to tan or brown. Secondly, the ground spot on the underside of the melon will change from a cream or creamy-yellow color to tan. If you thump the melon with your finger, it will make a 'plunk' sound instead of a 'plink'. Practice by thumping a few watermelons in the grocery store to learn how to recognize the sound of a ripe melon. Other things I take into consideration is whether enough days have passed that it is reasonable to think a melon is ripe, and also I look at the size of the melon. A mature melon should be within the size range you expect for that variety, too, you know. If you are growing a variety that produces 20-25 lb. melons, then if you are looking at a 10-lb. melon on that vine, unless something has gone horribly wrong, the 10-lb. melon will not be ripe.

I have a friend who is an impatient gardener. He often simply cannot wait for the first melon to ripen. So, even when he knows it is too early and that his melons aren't ripe yet, he'll check one via a plug to see if it is ripe. When he determines it is not ripe, he reinserts the plug into the melon. He insists the melon goes on and ripens naturally, but I've never tried it myself. He just cuts a circular plug out of the melon using a pocket knife or paring knife. Picture something about the size of a nickle or quarter. He's been growing melons longer than I've been alive and loves them so much he just finds it really hard to wait for them to ripen. Of course, checking them early doesn't make them ripen early.

We like a lot of the old varieties like Black Diamond, Yellow Belly Black Diamond, Moon and Stars, Orange Flesh Tendersweet, Wilhite Tendergold and Blacktail Mountain. That last one was bred by Glenn Drowns and has superb flavor. It is one of the most productive plants we've ever grown. We also grow Sugar Baby and Bush Sugar Baby some years. Both varieties take up very little space in the garden if grown vertically and produce nice refrigerator-sized melons.

The time from flower to fruit can vary, but with most varieties, you'll get a ripe melon roughly 40-50 days after the flower is pollinated.

Some years it seems like it takes a million years for the first watermelon to ripen, but after that, the ripe melons come in fast and furious. We have a hard time eating them fast enough sometimes. (You can preserve watermelons by making and freezing melon balls. To eat them, half-way thaw them and eat them that way so they aren't mushy.)

I was hoping our first ripe melon would be ripe by July 4th, but it still sounds plinky and its tendril is green, so I guess it won't make it by Independence Day.

Dawn