Harvested a Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon

This year when I planted the spring garden, I made a point of going through my saved seeds stash.  These are seeds that I've saved over the years and stored for safe-keeping in vitamin bottles.  Each year I try to plant as much as I can, but inevitably, I have more seeds saved than I have time or land to plant them on.

As the seeds get older, the germination drops.  At some point only a few (or none) of the seeds sprout.  This spring I pulled out an old ibuprofen bottle labeled "Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon" that contained seeds I saved back in 2012.  No chance they would be any good, right?  Well, they sprouted!  The plants were real weak.  It took from early spring until late summer, but the plants finally yielded a melon we could eat.

The melon is called Moon and Stars because it is supposed to have a big yellow moon and many yellow stars on its dark green color.  Except on this melon, the moon wasn't a defined circle and the dark green color was actually a medium-light green color.  I don't know if perhaps it didn't cross with another watermelon I had growing in the garden.  Oh well...

One of the ways to tell when a melon is ripe is to look at the tendrils closest to the melon.  When it has turned brown, the melon is telling you that it is finished growing.  It can be picked, put in the fridge, chilled, cut up and eaten on a hot day.  It is perfectly fine to let the stickiness run down your forearms and drip from your elbows as you enjoy the sweet taste of summer.

Brown tendril says, "Pick me, I'm ripe!"

The next afternoon, we pulled the watermelon out and sliced it in two.  Just as I had remembered from 2012, the flesh in this watermelon is yellow-light orange color and the seeds are white.  My son Russ cubed it up.  We began to eat some and it was nice and sweet.

After we enjoyed eating, Russ brought some home for him to eat later and I packed some to bring to work as a mid-day snack.  I finished it off today.  We have at least one more that is ripening in the garden that we will eat, thankful that even old seeds can germinate and produce.