By Faith Peppers

The University of Georgia

As the Fourth of July nears, abundant rains are trickling danger
into Georgia watermelon fields.

“Right now the crop looks OK,” said Terry Kelley, an extension
horticulturist with the University of Georgia College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “But we need the faucet
to turn off. It could certainly go downhill real quick if we
keep getting rain.”

The biggest problem with rain on watermelons is not the water on
the melons but trouble on the vine.

“You increase the disease pressure on the vines and it’s hard to
keep diseases in check,” Kelley said. “Once the vines start to
decline, the watermelons can be exposed to sun damage and get
burn on the rind.”

Sun damage can discolor the rind, making the melon
unmarketable.

Rain, rain, go away

The promise of soaking showers across the state is bad enough.
But in south Georgia, where most of Georgia’s watermelons are
grown, there’s the constant threat of afternoon
thundershowers.

“Even when we have warm sunny days we get those afternoon
thunderstorms, and that’s just as bad because the vines go into
the nighttime wet,” Kelley said.

Wet vines at night set up conditions for disease to invade.

Picking tasty melons

Good-tasting melons are hard to detect in the store, Kelley
said.

“About the only way you know if you have a good melon, is to cut
it open and taste it,” he said. It may look fine on the outside,
but taste is all in the growing.

“Picking a good melon in the store is probably the hardest thing
for anybody to do,” he said. “You have to count on growers
harvesting optimally mature melons in the field.”

Another drawback to cloudy, wet conditions is the negative
impact on melons’ flavor.

“You have more water in the ground that the melon takes up,”
Kelley said, “and with less sunshine they produce less sugar, so
the flavor is diluted.”

What’s your taste?

When picking a good melon, variety doesn’t matter much. It’s a
matter of preference.

“We grow several varieties in Georgia,” Kelley said. “One of the
reasons is consumers have such varied preferences. Some want the
older-type, gray melon which is a light green all over. More
predominant on the market these days are the striped melons.”

Then you have seedless vs. seeded melons. “More and more of the
market each year is going toward the seedless melons,” he
said.

Seedless melons aren’t really seedless. They have immature seed
coats that are edible.

“In Georgia, we’re probably only growing 35 to 40 percent
seedless,” Kelley said. “On the West Coast it’s closer to 90 to
95 percent.”

Georgia grows 35,000 to 40,000 acres of watermelons, worth
between $50 million and $60 million.

Good melon values

Prices for this year’s melons have been good for growers and
should still be a good value for shoppers.

“We have experienced some higher-than-average prices because the
Florida crop was short,” Kelley said.

Consumer prices will vary from store to store but should range
from $2.99 to $4.99 per melon.

“That’s not uncharacteristic for prices this time of year,” he
said. “Prices usually drop a little after July Fourth, and that
may not happen this year if we don’t get a break with the
weather.”

Growers have their fingers crossed for some drying conditions
over the next week.

“We’re generally sitting on a pretty good crop if the weather
holds up,” Kelley said. “We may not get quite the yields we
would get in a better year, but from average to above average.
But, if we continue to get these wet conditions, that could
change dramatically.”