The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

September 28, 2012

Watermelon Harvest

Filed under: Storage and Preservation — bob @ 9:52 am

One of the best investments I made this year wasn’t in stocks or bonds. It was buying a $1.89 pack of watermelon seeds from the hardware store.

I forgot to order watermelon seeds in my regular online seed order so, I bought them locally. They had only one pack of one variety left so I bought it. I mentioned these melons in previous posts.

This week I needed to harvest all of the watermelon since they were all ripe and ready to go.

That one pack yielded 32 full-sized watermelons! What do you do with 32 huge watermelons? After friends and family got their melons, there were still plenty left.

One thing I always wanted to try was dehydrating watermelons. That’s exactly what I did.  About 2 – 1/2 watermelons — minus their rinds —  fit into my food dehydrator. It took almost 20 hours to dry them down so they were no longer moist and sticky. I filled up four quart food storage bags with that batch.

These watermelon slices started out about 1/2" thick. After drying, they were about the thickness of a nacho chip.

The dehydration process concentrated the sweetness so much that they taste like some kind of exotic candy.

My dried watermelon will be a real treat this winter when the snow is flying. I still plan juice a few melons and try out watermelon wine with some others.

Bob

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