WATERMELON HEAVEN: KIDS AND ADULTS SAVOR EVERY JUICY BITE DURING THE HEAT OF SUMMER

On a sultry August evening, four boys raced through their slices of watermelon, the fruit's watery goodness dripping from their chins.

Several members of another generation put aside the hoes they were using in the half-acre patch beside a branch that eases by Zion United Methodist Church near Gordonville. The grown men, too, were soon savoring every bite, never mind the seeds.

"When I was a kid, I always wanted to raise watermelons," James Hartmann, one of the 10 or so men gathered in the melon patch, had explained the day before. "I tried to, but I didn't have a very good spot to do it on, and I didn't know how.

"Since I'm retired now, I thought I'd like to do some things that I used to want to do and never did get to."

Growing and eating watermelons appeal to all ages. Watermelons can be grown in hills and in rows, or, like Dortha Strack did this year, in the mulch around trees.

It was late in the planting season and, "I had four little plants that needed a home," said Strack, explaining the unusual location of her watermelon plants. Reared on a farm, Strack speaks of gardening with an ease that comes only after long acquaintance with the practice.

Watermelons are a popular part of many local gardens, surmised Strack, who works at Sunny Hill Gardens. Strack said that when families come to purchase seeds, "almost every time the kids will pick up a pack and say, 'Can we grow watermelon?'"

About four summers ago the men's club -- some 25 strong -- of the United Methodist Church on Route Z decided to plant watermelon as a club project. They've donned hats and brought sharpened hoes to the little piece of bottomland each summer since.

Funds raised through sale of the melons are used in church-related projects, many of them mission oriented, Weldon Macke explained. Besides that, Macke said with a smile, "We have a lot of fun."

It's not just a fund-raiser, but it's also fun raising the crop, said Paul H. Seabaugh. "We make a little money and it pulls us together," he said.

Pausing from video-taping his friends at work in the melon patch -- he's been taping them all summer -- Hadley "George" Hartman said: "Everybody pitches in and lends a hand. It seems like anybody that has the time at all, they're always willing to get right in there and help with it."

The men's club plants primarily a variety of melon called crimson sweet, a round-to-oblong, striped melon among several longtime favorites, according to a watermelon growing guide available through the University of Missouri Extension.

Other varieties of watermelon widely planted in the state include the Charleston gray, a long, gray-green melon, and the jubilee, a long, striped melon. Hybrid melons such as the mirage and royal sweet have been grown commercially in significant acreage, the publication notes.

While watermelon is a crop grown in many parts of the state, Missouri's Bootheel is the primary watermelon producer. And the area is no newcomer to the industry, said Tim Baker, horticulture specialist with the University of Missouri Extension.

Crop-growers' input "has gotten big enough that the national market knows that they're going to get watermelons from Missouri at this time of year," Baker said. "We work into the national market in a pretty big way."

Some farmers may opt to grow watermelon in rotation with other crops, and rotating the location of the crop is a good idea for the home gardener, too. "When you rotate them, keep any kind of cucurbit crop out of that area. That would include squash, gourds and pumpkins, anything in the cucurbit family," Baker said. "Put something totally different in there."

Hartmann suggests rotating watermelon plants with other plants every two to three years.

Generally, watermelon should be planted about 10 feet apart, he said, noting, "When you plant them, you think there's a lot of ground wasted." But soon vines cover the ground. "You want the vines to keep the weeds down," Baker explained.

The men's club planted 150 hills of watermelon this year. Hartmann said each hill, which should contain no more than three plants each, could produce seven to eight good size watermelons. "If the season is just right, the vines will stay green and keep producing, but they'll be a little bit smaller," he said.

Watermelon harvesting tips

Watermelon are typically at peak quality for about one week and should be harvested at that time. Indicators of watermelon ripeness include:

-- A dull sound when thumped.

-- A yellowish color on the underside.

-- Ridges on the surface of the rind.

-- A brown tendril on the stem where the fruit stem is attached.

From "Growing Watermelons in Missouri," published by University Extension, University of Missouri-Columbia.