If you see a pickup of watermelons for sale on Main Street, those belong to Bob Quinn. They were planted and tended to by Caleb Kriser who is also in charge of Quinn's Kracklin' Kamut snack nuts.
It seems that Kriser came from watermelon country in Florida. Meantime Bob Quinn has been trying all of his life to grow watermelons but could not due to a very short growing season.
Quinn had succeeded in growing a few watermelons thanks to a longer growing season in this part of Montana. Caused by climate change? Your guess is as good as anyone's on that subject but one thing is for certain according to most farmers and gardeners. They see little change in growing season habits in the spring but in the fall, there is typically a lot more growing season before that one first blast of Jack Frost.
These watermelons sell for 49 cents a pound.
There are plenty of them and they do have seeds. Bob Quinn says those seeds are what make the watermelon sweet. The one watermelon Quinn brought into "The Mountaineer" while not being seedless, are most certainly one of the sweetest varieties ever grown here.
This is but one more example of what Bob Quinn is all about. He says that maybe you don't want to grow all the fuel you will ever need for your equipment but if some people got together so the chief complaint of growing fuel (that being the expense of it), is born by many, not just one or two.
Grow your own dry land garden, your orchard which should supply you of many kinds of great juices all year long.
In other words, make your farm diversify enough to help you and your family to live better and more healthy lives. Manage the farm so that you can make more money than ever before while existing high on the hog yourselves.
Lest, "Mountaineer" readers think this all sounds too simple. Well, it is not. Read on yourself to find out all the problems neophyte watermelon grower Caleb had in growing his product. Here he is in his words, Caleb Kriser explains the process.
This year, the Quinn Farm and Ranch joined us with Glenn and Alma Terry to experiment with growing watermelons on their place next to the Missouri River. An interest in this started when Bob Quinn had grown some 20 and 30 pound watermelons over the past few years in his garden. When he hired Caleb Kriser and found out he grew up growing watermelons in Florida, he was excited to add Caleb's expertise and expand the enterprise. After all the climate in Florida can't be that different from Big Sandy's. Well okay, maybe that's nit true but nonetheless an interest in growing watermelons remained. That interest was then shared with Charlie Overby (the farm's vegetable and orchard manager) who liked the idea and excitement of something unique in this area. With that, an arrangement was made between the Quinn Farm and the Terry's to try a watermelon growing experiment. As expected, there were challenges on starting out. In climates with warm days and nights, a watermelon should be ready to pick 90 days from theday the seed is planted. Probably the biggest challenge in this area is that although the days can be warm enough starting in May, the evenings are still cool for a while.
The other challenge is that the hot sun can scorch little watermelon plants. In more moderate climates, they have warm days and evenings to grow and gain size before the hot days come. In this climate, the transition from cool days to hot days in early summer can take place quite quickly, giving little time for the plants to grown equal in size before the heat comes.
In spite of these challenges, there were some successes in growing the large green-striped wonders this year. In the end, about 80 watermelons were harvested and although most of them aren't quite as red on the inside as a California melon, they are sweet and have a good texture.
If another watermelon growing experiment were to take place, the plants would need to be started in a greenhouse at least a month before transplanting them into the field.
In addition, means such as heat caps or black mesh would be employed to ensure faster growth in the late spring/early summer period. For now, the melons that were harvested are ready to be enjoyed and can be purchased at Drew Pages office (the accounting office for all the Quinn enterprises next to The Mint Bar).
