jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

What happened to watermelons? I remember watermelons being long, but over the years, they have gotten shorter. I agreed to bring a watermelon to a local picnic today, so I bought one yesterday. What I got was round and smaller that a basketball - for $8.00! After I cut through the 2" rind, how much will be left to eat? No more watermelons for me.

kerry12 Loc: Harrisburg, Pa.

Funny. I just said to my wife the other day that watermelons used to be a lot bigger. You are right. The price has gone up and the size has gone down.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Rainier Cherries are currently $8-9 a pound at one store in our area of Southeast PA.
Bought 2.5 pounds yesterday.........

jojo Smith Loc: Northern Michigan

i have seen that to in Michigan

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I bought a bag of cherries on sale last week - $1.50/lb. Most of my produce shopping now involves sales. Peaches, etc., are priced out of my comfort zone - $3.50 a pound. Not interested.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Most peaches I've purchased in the past were not ripe...
Same with Nectarines.
I've been very leery now.

cliff Hilbert Loc: Plano, TX

When you buy peaches put them in a paper bag, i.e. grocery bag, close it up and put it inside for 3-4 days. A guy at a peach orchard told me this some years ago and it works well.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I'll have to try that as opposed to sitting on the counter. I love good peaches and nectarines...
(They are not supposed to be crunchy. )

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right. They are picked before they ripen because they have to travel far. I always wait a few days before eating them.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Tried that, still crunchy and little taste.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

The trend in watermelons is seedless.

Seedless doesn't mean no seeds. It means the seeds are like those in cucumbers, soft and edible. I have not seen any of the really large watermelons as seedless so I suspect there's a size limit for those genetics.

Since I was in New England, I was not able to grow the large watermelons, which take too long for the northern season. I managed to grow a crop of medium size watermelons one year, but the market for watermelon goes to zero after Labor Day so the medium watermelons got used for Jack-O-Lanterns (they're pretty good for that because you can leave a lot of red inside to give you a good color to the lighting, but it's not worth trying to grow them for that).

The watermelons we would normally grow are called 'Personal Size' because they're pretty small (2-5 lb). In MA we could grow watermelons up to about 8-10 lb but the larger ones took too long. Even then, it took special care in the spring to get the plants started. They like hot weather and (in the past) the New England spring was fairly cool.

The large watermelons are really a southern crop.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

Deleted.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

My wife buys kiwi fruit (one a day keeps you 'regular'). As most fruit now they are picked too soon. Sometimes it takes 3 weeks to ripen and even then they end up with firm bits inside. Or they go straight from too hard to eat to over ripe in a day. We buy little fruit now at the supermarket because it is all picked too soon. Roadside stalls are much better sources for fruit. I am fed-up with transferring fruit straight into the compost bin. To make it worse they have these little plastic labels on them telling you where the fruit is from as if I care. The labels don't rot in the compost although recently these labels have been banned so we will see how that works out.
And now that it has been mentioned I must admit we don't see the big watermelons like we used to. Only the tiddlers which can be halved, wrapped in glad wrap and sold to those who didn't want a big bit. I note that the halving seems to result in a doubling in price.

Dannj

Great idea! But paper grocery bags are pretty hard to come by in a lot of places😂

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

I noticed the same thing but those are for seedless watermelons. I have a feeling seedless is all the stores stock anymore because people don't want to deal with seeds. Too bad; they'll miss the fun, danger and satisfaction of blowing 3 or 4 seeds 10 feet onto your friend's arm.