Home Grown: Melons on the mind in Arizona

For this week’s Home Grown, we explore the sweet juicy fruits coming into season here in Yuma.

A fruit that is grown on the farms of 14 local farms around the state of Arizona.

A cold, sweet slice of melon almost always makes a hot day better.

Cantaloupes, honeydew, watermelons, and even Hami melons.

All sweet fruits come into season here in Arizona.

Arizona has 14 major melon growers growing for the melon market, including farmer John Boelts.

“Those of us that grow the melons, it’s a bit of an art,” Boelts told 13 On Your Side.

The reason for their success in the region?

Our hot climate and soil type are to thank.

” People don’t think about it but with melons, it’s great to grow them in a dry place, and central and southwest Arizona is pretty dry. So we don’t deal with the rain storms that much. Depending on the melon, you’ll pick soil type for what works well for that melon, melons that aren’t netted like a watermelon or a honeydew, they do really well on silty and Sandy loam soil netted melons typically like clothier soils, when the weather’s not hot melons don’t push as much sugar into their fruit, ” Boelts said.

According to the Arizona Farm Bureau, over 22,000 acres are committed to growing different types of melons in Arizona.

“When you say how many varieties of melons, well there’s a lot and some of them are crossed together…we have a window that we are growing melons in the spring that would be Hamis , honeydews cantaloupe or cantaloupe type melons like Harpers and watermelon,” Boelts said.

If you thought lettuce was popular produce grown in our sunny state, out of the 12 states that grow honeydew and cantaloupe, Arizona ranks number two behind California.

Melons are part of the cucurbit, or gourd family, along with the cucumber.

” Most melons are in the cucurbit family the things that we call a melon. It’s a lot of hand and eye selection so especially some of the more specialty melons that we grow here and are consumed across the country. Folks are looking at those melons, and they want them to look a certain way, and then they also have to be sweet on the inside and some of them don’t have a lot of visual indicators on the outside so the crews have to be particular. You can’t replace the hard-working folks that are out harvesting that, ” Boelts said.

Most melons have either a netted or smooth rind which requires special care during the growing process.

“We try to make sure that when we are irrigating the fields, we are only getting water to the roots of the crop and not getting any on the melons, we want the melon to stay dry and stay on top of dried dirt, ” Boelts said.

There’s an old wives’ tale when it comes to picking your melons, including hitting your melon to determine ripeness, but Boelts says that’s not always the case when it comes to picking your produce.

” Some of those aren’t live old wives’ tales but most of them are, like the old thumping the watermelon thing. There’s a little bit of validity to it because the consistency and firmness of the internal get different, but that’s pretty tough to do so really what you’re relying on is the folks in the field did a good job of harvesting, ” Boelts said.

Not only are melons good sources of vitamins, but they are also just plain delicious.

Each melon you see in the store is hand-picked to fit the taste of the consumer, literally.

” Melons are measured by sugar content, so out in the field before we’re harvesting, you can take and cut that melon open and you drop a little of the juice on it, and you look into the sunlight and it will show you on the scale what your sugar content is on that Brix meter. So you want to make sure it’s 14 or above, nobody likes to eat an unripe melon it’s just not going to taste right, ” Boelts said. ” The melons that were harvested out of this field behind us and most of the fields and Yuma are packed right in the field. We want to make sure that harvest equipment and those harvest employees that are handling the fruit and selecting the fruit they are doing a good job of it, and they are following all the proper food safety protocols. ”

So, what better way to celebrate summer than with a locally grown melon?

“We hope everybody appreciates their melons and realizes it’s not an easy crop to grow and don’t take it for granted, and they enjoy eating them this summer,” Boelts said.