The perfect melon: Farmer gives advice for choosing sweet fruit at the market

Everyone has a method for determining if a melon is ripe from thumping the fruit to checking for yellow spots.

One Virginia farmer told Farm Bureau Virginia his best advice is to “know your grower.”

Rick Brossman, a Loudoun County produce farmer, grows multiple varieties of watermelon, cantaloupe and other crops on 85 acres. Brossman’s watermelon inventory includes seedless Sugar Babies, seeded Sangria Melons, Yellow Babies and Bottle Rockets.

“The sugar babies are by far the best watermelon in my opinion,” he said. “They’re as sweet as can be.”

Cantaloupe, also known as a muskmelon, runs the gamut of sweetness and texture.

“There is much diversity in the specialty muskmelon group,” said Chris Mullins, Virginia Cooperative Extension horticulture specialist at Virginia State University. “Each melon type has unique textures, flavors and vary in their sweetness. Some have more sweetness and flavor than the traditional cantaloupe.”

Brossman’s cantaloupes include traditionally sweet Athenas, and larger, honey-sweet Aphrodites, plus deep-yellow canary melons, also known as Spanish melon, with a blend of cantaloupe and honeydew flavors.

The Spanish melon has an “extremely crisp, clean, sweet taste,” Brossman said.

For consumers searching grocery bins for a crowd-pleasing watermelon, a yellow belly may be an indication of ripeness.

There are other visual clues at harvest, said Chris Drake of Sandy Point Farms in Southampton County.

“For watermelon that has stripes, its stripes will start to break, and there will be clear definition between the stripe and non-stripe,” he said. “That will indicate maturity, though every variety is different.”