I saw this the other day.

I once had a grocery store produce person tell me that the best way to tell if a watermelon is ripe is to stroke the rind and if it's sticky, it's ripe because the sugars are starting to come through the rind.

I've always judged ripeness by the yellow spot on the bottom.

And what does 'no webbing' mean?

Seems bogus to me too considering how many different melon varieties are grown with various stripe arrangements. I use a combo of several ripeness tips and can still pick one that's still not quite ripe, although that's rare and usually due to the vine dying before the melon fully develops.

Some of my picking tips :

- Brown tendril at melon connection

- More brown tendrils down the line

- Leaf at melon connection is old and worn out

- White bottom turns yellowish

- Tiny black spots within the yellow bottom

- Melon seems heavier than it looks

- A slap on one side vibrates to the opposite side (like a water balloon)

- Thump on melon rind is low pitched (Punk not pink)

- Melon rind is dull not shinny

- Melon rind is lumpy and not smooth

Here's one melon we cut open yesterday, it almost didn't fit in the fridge at 21"...

I estimated it at 40 lbs, almost got a hernia picking it. Extremely Juicy and Very Sweet.

I cut it open in the store. If it's not ripe, I try another one.

Yea, bogus. What about melons with no stripes, or smaller melons? Same with the chart -- many melons grow naturally elongated.

Good tips, vgkg Z-7 VA. I have heard many of them before, but a couple were new to me like the shiny rind. Some years the homegrown watermelon just aren't good -- I chalk it up to weather conditions, namely too cool or too wet and too cool and too wet, in which case just forget about it and go buy one.

Vgkg that melon looks fantastic! Stores allow us to exchange unripe watermelons and we went through a 1/2 dozen one year to get a ripe one. My wife takes back many to target, Walmart. aldi's and many other grocery stores all the time because even the farmers have a hard time picking them right, so this is our way to get a ripe one.
When I grow melons I never get it right and depend on luck, last year I luckily got three big perfect cantaloupe and were so good. I believe I've gotten lucky on watermelon twice.

Thanks for the validation, folks. I had a thought that this is yet another AI hallucination - "Farmers and Facebook posters' - OK sure 😏

I'm a rap on each to find the deepest sounding melon. Works. Correct stripe width or not.

Honetdew melons are ripe when you can hear the seeds sloshing around inside when you shake it close to your ear. The cantaloupe are ripe and sweet when they have a belly button (the vine pulled away when it was picked. If there is no belly button because the vine ia still attached and was cut to pick the melon, it was picked green and will never get sweet and juicy.) Also, the cantaloupe rind must be turning tan under the webbing. Be sure the belly button has not turned black with mold. Watermelon: buy the deepest green one and be sure it feels heavy for its size, or it wont be juicy.

I think the grocery store person saying a sticky rind is good was in error. Watermelons are in the same family as squash and cukes. It's rind keeps it's contents inside. So it's not normal for it to ooze it's contents out it's rind.

In the garden, sticky can mean a lot of aphids depositing sticky, or it might have a blight. In ComAg, sometimes oils and other things are sprayed on the melons that can leave a residue, and not everywhere washes that off.

In a store, it could mean someone broke a melon and since they usually don't get washed on site, the melons that remain end up sticky from the broken melons juice.

I was thinking the same, bees - sticky means something oozed or dripped onto it - likely something rotten...

“Honetdew melons are ripe when you can hear the seeds sloshing around inside when you shake it close to your ear.”

Will give that a try. I’ve yet to find a method that works for honeydew.

I don't know about off the vine, but from the high end grocery store, I can choose a good honeydew--and they do have unripe ones as well. Even color and richly the color it's supposed to be--i.e., pale but fully its color, not a tint (whiteness) of it. The stem end needs to feel as if it could yield but doesn't really. but isn't actually hard either. It should sound hollow when knocked lightly. The blossom end smells sugary, and even better if it's fragrant. I don't know if this is scientific or just what I tell myself when I'm communing with the melon, or if it's just great odds at the grocery store of getting a good one and I'm just lucky.

I've been smelling cantaloupes and honeydews for years now to judge ripeness - pineapples work like that too. If they have no fragrance, they're tasteless.

You watch them growing. When they stop growing, you watch the adjacent tendril. When it turns yellow and then brown, wait 3 to 7 days according to how ripe you want them.

Yes, the bottom should turn some yellowish, but homegrown melons not on plastic with good organic matter will pit and scab some on the bottom obsuring the yellow somewhat.

To be fair, OP 'tip' was for buying, not growing. I've never grown melons myself, they always perish from powdery mildew or some other disease before I ever get any fruit.

I've learned to pick ones that are dark, but with that yellow area. But.....sometimes they are VERY sweet, and sometimes they aren't. So I think it's just a game of chance.