Watermelon
Strangely, these luscious fruits bare very little resemblance to the original fruits cultivated since Egyptian times which looked more like a large cucumber! Grown mainly around the Mediterranean and Southern Russia, the watermelon found a new home in the southern United States where many heirloom varieties are still grown. Watermelons and muskmelons take no more time to ripen than pumpkins and deserve to be grown because their sweetness and flavour is so superior to commercially grown varieties. Primarily evolving as a water storage unit to provide moisture to feed its seeds, growing watermelon is a balance of trying to keep enough moisture in the fruit, without causing them to split open. This ‘splitting’ can also be the result of growing warm-climate varieties in cool areas, as daytime temperatures below 25°C can cause these explosions.