Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 29 JuneA Sugar Baby watermelon on 29 June, six or seven gray-green leaves cut deep into rounded lobes on stems bristling with stiff white hairs, one yellow flower open beneath them and a tendril reaching right out of the frame in hard low sun.Week of 29 JuneA Sugar Baby watermelon on 1 July, its gray-green leaves cut into rounded lobes and notched again so they read as a stencil against the black beneath, one shallow bowl of a male flower open on the vine under flat overcast.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Baby watermelon on 7 July with its first fruit down on the ground, round and pale and still furred all over in fine white hair, two small brown scars healed into one side of it, under a flat shadowless overcast.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Baby watermelon on 9 July, still young enough to carry soft white hairs along its shoulders, its spent flower shriveled against one side — jagged darker bands running stem end to blossom, one tendril coiled fresh beside another already dried brown.Week of 6 JulyA Sugar Baby watermelon on 12 July, still pale and matte with dark green veins crackling across it in a fine net, the bristle-haired vine curling overhead and its stripes only just showing.Week of 13 JulySugar Baby watermelon on 17 July, matte and stippled with broad soft stripes running stem end to blossom end, one flank already paling where it lies against the fabric, a much younger fruit set behind it and weeds pushing up through the fabric edge.Week of 20 JulyA Sugar Baby watermelon on 20 July, gone matte and dark with only a faint suture ringing it and the palest green marbling left in a net across the rind, a younger one behind it still boldly striped, both under sharp lacy leaf shadows.Week of 20 JulyA Sugar Baby watermelon on 23 July, unstriped deep blue-green and paling where it sits on the ground, its sunlit face webbed over with raised tan corky ridges that radiate from one small pit near the middle and thin to scratch lines at the edges.Week of 20 JulyMatte and finely frosted, a Sugar Baby watermelon on 23 July carries darker green veining branching right across the rind and a broad cream band down its shaded side, still on its stalk with leaf shadows cut sharp over it from the upper right.Week of 27 JulyTwo Sugar Baby watermelons on 30 July, each set up on a scrap of cardboard to keep it off the ground, both so dark they read almost black and both marked with dried gray rivulets where the water ran off them, under deeply cut gray-green leaves.Week of 3 AugustA Sugar Baby watermelon on 4 August, dark almost to black under a fine netted mottling with no stripes at all, its rind scribbled over with dozens of pale tan corky scratches and one raised russet scar low down where it has rubbed the ground.Week of 10 AugustCut fruit on a purple board on 10 August, one half laid face up and two thick wedges beside it, the flesh deep pink-red with a coarse glistening grain radiating out of a small hollow heart and flat chestnut seeds set in slightly darker pockets.Week of 31 AugustA Sugar Baby watermelon on 3 September, matt dark green under pooled rain and still wearing the pale ring that shows it has not been turned — a live tendril curled across its top, a dead one beside it dried tan and wound into a tight spiral.
