As much as strawberries signal the start of the spring harvest to many people, watermelons are the calling cards of summer for many others. The sweet and refreshing flavor of watermelon just seems to go hand in hand with the heat of summer.
On a late April visit to James Sharp’s farms to see strawberries and Romain lettuce being grown for the N.C. Farm to School program, we happened across a greenhouse full of watermelon seedlings and workers planting a commercial-sized field of watermelons. It is definitely on a much larger scale than your average backyard garden.
Here’s a video of workers planting the watermelon seedlings on black plastic.
[FieldTrip]?v=H0_-lqgU7SM[/FieldTrip]
North Carolina’s watermelon season runs from June through August, so consumers should soon be finding local melons at stores, farmers markets and roadside stands.