Is There Any Use for an Unripe Watermelon?

[BakerAunt]

I bought a Sugar Baby watermelon at the farmers market yesterday. I eagerly cut into it for dessert tonight, and it is not red but a whitish color, with a bit of pink around the seeds. I will notify the vender, and I took a picture of it. I googled "uses for unripe watermelon," but it is not looking hopeful, especially as most of those recipes assume a pinkish color at the least. It is not sweet and has a slight cucumber taste to it. (Apparently, watermelons and cucumbers are distant cousins.)

Any suggestions? If not, I will throw it behind the shed.

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[Mike Nolan]

My grandmother would probably have made watermelon pickles from it. You want the less-ripe part of the melon/rind for that, anyway.

[BakerAunt]

I've decided their best use will be to dump them behind the shed for the animals to eat. Sigh.

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[RiversideLen]

That's terrible, BA. Very disappointing.

[Mike Nolan]

There is such a thing as a white watermelon though I've never had one, so I don't know what it would taste like, but 'cucumber' probably isn't it.

I grew some Crenshaw melons a few years ago that were ones I'd heard about but never had, we tried one and the rest we left for the critters.

[BakerAunt]

My husband tells me that even the animals are ignoring the unripe watermelon!

[RiversideLen]

I'm not surprised, BA! One way to tell if your produce is ready to pick is to see if the animals are starting to show interest in it. Their noses knows!

[BakerAunt]

Well, some critter did hollow out the rinds, so some animal appears to have deigned to eat it.

[Mike Nolan]

Eventually they'll eat the seeds, if nothing else. That was true even for the Crenshaw melons I grew a few seasons ago. Squirrels really love pumpkin seeds.

[BakerAunt]

I always put out the pumpkin and squash seeds for the squirrels and chipmunks. They go fast!

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