Wowza Watermelon

We have big aspirations for gardening, which don't normally pan out due both to lack of effort and poor growing conditions (we don't have the sunniest of yards). This year, we were ambitious and decided to plant a watermelon plant on our back patio. We then promptly forgot about it (mostly), except for occasionally watering it. Towards the end of the summer, when it became necessary to finally attend to our overgrown patio, we checked in with the watermelon plant again, mainly to move its spreading vines off of our paved patio area. Lo and behold, despite not ideal growing conditions (limited sun, limited water, probably low nutrient soil), we grew a watermelon!

We let it sit for a couple weeks longer, partially in the hopes that it would get bigger, and partially just because we forgot to harvest it, until finally we decided it was time to pick the sucker. The girls both wanted to pose with it and then we went to eat it.

Despite a copious amount of black seeds (apparently I didn't pick the seedless variety), it was entirely edible and a big hit among the girls. It wasn't the sweetest, but it had a good texture and was juicy. Hayden was captivated by all the seeds. They are studying seeds and plants in school so we saved some of the seeds and she took them in to school to show everyone. I think she shared a seed with everyone in her class.

 
Molly in particular LOVED it. She couldn't get enough! She ate piece after piece, and cried when I hesitated to give her more. She was good at eating every last bit of fruit off the rind, using her four teeth to maximum efficiency!

All but one of these pieces was eaten by Molly.

 She was so funny, we even took video of her eating.  The first one shows how mad she got when we wouldn't give her more, but she could see that we were holding back. And the second shows her going to town on another piece (is there such thing as too much watermelon?!).  See if you can hear her munching sounds!

After such summer growing success (we also harvested several tomatoes and lots of jalapenos), we planted some broccoli this fall. I'll try to remember to let you know how that turns out!