Citron Watermelon 'Red Seeded Citron'

I got my seeds from Baker Creek (rareseeds.com), packed for 2015. This is also known as Colorado Preserving Melon (at least my variety of...Read More Red-seeded Citron watermelon is).

This is a totally awesome plant. I started mine super early indoors, but it got damaged physically and lost all of its leaves. So, I gave it lots of bright artificial light (from CFLs), and it grew a new shoot. I transplanted it a little late, which was a mistake, because they take a while to mature. After you transplant just about any plant, it's like they have to mature all over again, a certain amount. (A certain amount of maturity indoors really helps with some plants, though.)

Anyway, the plant grew enormous with no signs of stopping. At first, it only grew one melon, but eventually, it grew eight more. The melons are very nice-looking (very round and uniform, with clear patterns and colors).

I'm hoping extra phosphorus will help it to ripen sooner. I don't know if it even needs to ripen all the way.

My red watermelons all got spider mites, and only produced one tiny melon per plant, but the Citron watermelon thrived in our clay-loam soil in the record-breaking heat (it got to 116° F. in June!) It's still growing strong. I counted nine melons on one plant, and it's still growing more (though the growing season is almost over).

Anyway, I didn't get many cucumbers. They didn't handle the heat very well, and perhaps not our soil, either. So, it's nice to have all these melons that I can pickle instead. They're supposed to be very high in pectin.

They say you can cook the flesh in a fashion that turns it into a thick, water-like substance that quenches thirst better than water.

Citron watermelons are also called tsamma. They grow wild in Africa, including in the Kalahari Desert. They provide water for humans and animals. I even read about a people who used it as their primary water source for both them and their animals (and that if offered water, the animals wouldn't drink it until they got used to it).

Supposedly, you can live off no other food or water than Citron watermelon in the desert for a really long time. However, I've also read that if you feed them, and only them, to animals and work the animals, they will lose muscle mass quickly. So, they're probably not high in muscle-building proteins. Nevertheless, they're useful in the desert.

The seeds are said to make humans and at least some livestock fatter.

I live near the Oregon High Desert. So, I like the idea of growing these in the desert. They're pretty nice plants.

If you're looking for something you can grow and make pickles out of in a clay desert, this would be a great choice. Kiwano would be another, perhaps. You should probably also consider Beit Alpha cucumber, Little Leaf cucumber and Dark Star zucchini (I hear you can make awesome pickles with zucchini). You can pickle normal watermelon rinds. Hopi Red, Hopi Yellow, Yellow Doll and Blacktail Mountain may be some good regular watermelons to try.

Honestly, I'd like to cross Citron watermelon with other watermelons and breed its hardy characteristics into them (and the hardness of the interior out, while still allowing it to keep for a long time). Even if the interior is still hard, it would be nice to breed a bigger Citron-type watermelon. Cross it with Carolina Cross, maybe. Just imagine all the pickles, pies and preserves you could make! It would be nice to breed an earlier variety, too.

I should note that the water needs of this plant are not average, as stated in this PlantFiles article. It requires very little water, actually (in my experience, at least, although having clay-loam soil helps). I watered it a lot at first (though I'm not sure if it needed it), but I hardly watered it at all after it grew out a bit, because it didn't need it (there is black plastic down, though, but I imagine it may do well without it, too). These grow wild in the Kalahari Desert, and feral in Mexico. They practically water us (instead of the other way around).

I should note that I gave my plant worm castings, basalt rockdust, rock phosphate and potassium sulfate. I also fertilized the plant once with water-soluble 20-20-20 fertilizer (early on), and maybe once with 24-8-16 fertilizer (a little later, but still earlier on), but this is not what I would recommend for watermelons, and although my Citron watermelon plant prospered, what I gave it probably wasn't ideal. I think I gave it too much potassium sulfate and too much basalt rockdust (but it was very forgiving, as were my muskmelons). I just recently gave it some monopotassium phosphate (for the phosphorus to try to encourage faster ripening), but that was very recently.

Not your typical watermelon; white solid flesh is inedible raw. This red-seeded variety has been grown for centuries and used to make pre...Read Moreserves and "sweetmeats" that are added to fruitcakes, cookies and puddings. The best fruits can be stored for up to a year and these should be the fruits that you save seed from for future planting. Extremely productive, 90-100 days.

The citron is best described as a watermelon which doesn't ripen. The flesh is clear and solid. They grow about the size of a small water...Read Moremelon and in fact mix readily. In my youth these were planted in cornfields well away from any watermelon patch and the flesh was used to make preserves. In todays world, they are pretty useless.