The One Trick to Picking a Sweet Watermelon Every Time

How to find the juiciest summer bite.

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One of my absolute, hands-down favorite things about summer? The watermelons. While it may be true that these days you can bring home this fruit any time of year, there’s no denying that it's juicier and more sugary in the summer. In fact, ever since I was a kid, I’ve equated summertime with fingers sticky from the sweet, red juice dripping down from a perfectly chilled triangular slice. 

That being said, I’ve always found picking a watermelon to be a little tricky. I try to follow expert recommendations for physical and visual clues that promise the sweetest, ripest fruit, but what never ceases to confuse me is the webbing that sometimes dances across the rind.

I’ve never gotten a clear answer on what those raised brown scars indicate about the taste and texture of the fruit’s flesh. So, I decided to chat with Cal Hucks, the Growing and Operations Manager at Coosaw Farms, a watermelon and blueberry farm located in Hampton County, South Carolina, and here's what he had to say.

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What Is Watermelon Webbing?

“Webbing is a naturally occurring abnormality on watermelons that happens when it ripens quickly from an early stage,” explains Hucks. It takes the right balance of high environmental temperatures and fertile soil for quick and effective ripening, and webbing can be a side effect of this fast process. "It also means that the watermelon should be sweet," he adds. "We rely on long, hot days to sweeten our watermelons.”

So, now I've got it: Webbing occurs during a quick ripening but is also an indicator of extra-sweet flesh.

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How to Pick the Sweetest Watermelon

When I ask Hucks about any negatives of webbing, he assures me that it's purely aesthetic. “It breaks up the beautiful dark and light green stripes,” he says, but quickly adds that the upside is that the watermelon "should be even sweeter than normal.”

If you’re looking for a super-sweet melon, Hucks suggests keeping an eye out for “some black sap-like dots coming out of the watermelon webbing." This is sugar and, of course, means the melon is sweet.

Additionally, Hucks recommends a few more visual clues to help select the perfect watermelon. The best ones “will have a very defined striping between the light and dark green on the rind and a nice buttery yellow belly.” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and buy a watermelon.

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