Melon is mention only once in the Bible at Numbers 11:5, and it actually refers to the watermelon Citrulluslanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai., which is synonymous with Citrullusvulgaris Schrad.Watermelons originated in southern Africa, but contrary to any stereotypes the
highest per capita consumption of watermelon is actually in China.
Thumping is an inaccurate and obsolete way to tell if a watermelon is ripe; the best way to tell is to just pet the watermelon, if it feels smooth it is green, but if it feels rough and bumpy it is ripe while those with wilted stems may be overripe. Another suspect way of determining the best watermelon is by counting the number of stripes where more stripes is supposedly better although this does not hold for those that have a solid color the same as the dark strips or lack stripes.
Sand Mountain is famous for growing watermelons because of having an idea soil type, but crop rotation is important otherwise the soil fertility will be depleted and disease organisms will increase resulting in smaller and/or lost crops. A good place to grow watermelons is a newly cut forest except perhaps for the competition from fire weed,
Erechtites
hieracifolia (L.) Raf. ex DC., although that would be less of a problem if the trees were cut just after the most recent autumn. Diseases such as blight are greatest is wet years as evidence by one farmer that had a good year on a small crop so he doubled acreage to be able to have profit to the benefit from an economy of scale, but that year was wet and the crop was lost so to make up for the lose he doubled again and lost another crop, but in the fourth year after doubling again he made a lot of money and got out of the business due to the risk. An unusual risk is having an entire field of watermelons eaten by coyotes.
The best
watermelons are the stolen ones, but this is a mute point because most
of the people in know that are growing any will give neighbors all they
can eat, but not all they can (steal and) sell. My dad jokingly accused a local
pastor of tempting people with stealing by planting his watermelons
next to the road rather than at the opposite end of his garden. Where as the pastor where I go to church claims the meanest thing he ever did (before becoming a Christian at the age of 14) was steal a watermelon.
Seedless
watermelons are seedless because they are infertile triploids (three
sets of chromosomes) that resulted from a hybrid between diploids (2
sets of chromosomes) and tetraploids (four sets of chromosomes). It is
necessary to inter-plant seedless watermelons with seeded watermelons
so that the fertile pollen stimulates parthenocarpicfruit production.
The wild gourd of II Kings 4:39 is Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Shrand., this plant is sometimes called the vine of Sodom, but it is not the same plant as the one called Vine of Sodom in Deuteronomy 32:32.
