Watermelon 101- birds and the bees

 

Kustodiev Merchants Wife

When I was writing on Facebook about my problems with my watermelon only having male blossoms, people would not believe me. I did my googling and found foto's of the male and female blossoms and still was being questioned where I got the info.

Like zucchini, watermelon do have male and female blossoms and the bees and other insects flying between the blossoms fertilize the female which allows the fruit to grow.

My watermelon plants were full with male blossoms, I read that the male blossoms came first, then the female. When I returned from Sicily, still no female blossoms.

I felt so let down, and was getting ready to write my watermelon failure blog post, when this morning my husband called me down to the garden.


We have a watermelon!!!

We bought two kinds, round and oblong

So for those growing your own- here is what a male blossom looks like from my garden

So now we have one which I never saw until this morning so I began to look more carefully around and found a female blossom with it's tiny tiny watermelon. When the blossom opens then it will be ready to be pollinated and we will have an oblong melon too.

here is the female- it is obvious. The tiny "ovary" will become a melon if pollinated

Can't wait to see how long they take to get to full size and how many we will get. I am already dreaming about making my favorite Watermelon Granita from Sicily  and Aqua di Sandia from Mexico. Will I have enough to also make watermelon and feta salad??? Watermelon jelly?