Why YSK: These tips may help you pick a more ripe, juicier, sweeter watermelon.

  • Brad Ganley@toad.work
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    1 year ago

    This is all good info except for the gender thing. The round/long difference is just a growth habit. Watermelon plants (and other cucurbits like squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, etc) produce male and female flowers. Only the female flowers produce fruit and must be pollinated by a male flower to do so.

  • GONADS125@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Morgan Freeman taught me to flick melons to determine the ripeness in Unleashed, and I have honed the skill to a masterful level. Get weird looks from strangers sometimes tho…

  • Fisk400@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This was bullshit the first 2000 times it was posted to reddit and it’s still bullshit here.

    • The_v@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I just roll my eyes at it now.

      FYI there is no reliable way to tell if a watermelon is ripe after it is harvested. The most reliable indicator is the tendril on the node the peduncle is attached to. When it is fully dry, the fruit is ready.

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ll just remember “pick the most fucked up looking melon with patchy orange spots and ugly crisscross webbing”. It’s probably not going to make the photo reel but it’ll taste good.

  • thekinghaslost@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nah, I’m just going to continue doing what I’ve always done: tapping the watermelon to hear the sound and pretend that I know what I’m doing.

  • raresbears@iusearchlinux.fyi
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    1 year ago

    YSK: Nonbinary watermelons are even better than male and female watermelons, but they’re pretty rare so they tend to command a high price

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I dont know about watermelons but there are a plethora of plants that can not produce fruit without being pollinated by another plant. Also if you ever self pollinate a plant you’ll have to recognize the 2 different parts. Is it just the calling them male/female that bothers you? Edit: I guess I should say plants/flowers can have a sex, fruits I don’t think would. They are just seed dispersers I believe.

        • mvirts@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Hmm I’m no plant expert, so maybe I’m wrong about this but I thought fruit always grows after pollen moves to an egg like part of the flower/plant, so the ‘sex’ of the fruit is always a combined pollen+egg like cell. This cell develops into a seed while the surrounding plant grows the fruit for various reasons. Maybe there is a heterozygous genetic trait in some plants where we could label the individual as sex A or B, but I thought self pollinating plants were basically both sexes at the same time??? Idk… Maybe I should do some googling but heck the fediverse needs content :P

          • Kethal@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The scientific definition of “fruit” is the ripened ovary of a flowering plant. This differs from the normal usage so some things not commonly considered fruit, such as tomatoes and the pods of soybeans, are fruits by this definition. Flowering plants (not all plants have flowers) have male and female anatomical structures. Many species have both structures in one flower. Some species have flowers that contains either male or female structures. These flowers can either be on the same plant (monoecious), like watermelon and corn, or on different plants (diecious), like papaya. The ovary, what will become the fruit, is a female anatomical structure, and it makes no sense to talk about a male fruit for any type of flower. Male flowers produce pollen, which fertilizes the embryo in an ovary, but male flowers themselves don’t produce fruit.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    None of these visual methods are reliable as these things differ greatly amongst melon varieties. The easiest way is just to knock on the watermelon like you would a door, if it sounds hollow on the inside, then it’s ripe.