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Old January 13, 2018   #32
Andrey_BY
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Minsk, Belarus, Eastern Europe (Zone 4a)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Keen101 View Post
I recognize that watermelon pattern! I suspect that russian watermelon has some Citron melon ancestry! No wonder it is a good keeper. The Soviet Union had a watermelon-citron hybrid breeding project where they recovered many good tasting watermelons that had the long keeping qualities of the citrons!

I too am breeding my own watermelon x Colorado Red Seeded Citron hybrids!
I don't think there is something about Citron here, but Charleston Gray watermelon was one of cross lines to improve desease tolerance.

They have been growing watermelons for ages in Astrakhan and Volgograd areas of the Russian South. From XII century they have been growing great watermelons keeping seeds from the best big size (20-25 kg) watermelons sending their harvest to the central part of Russia by ships via great river Volga!
Since 1930 there is an old special melon breeding station near Volgograd called Bykovskaya there this variety Kholodok was born in 1990 from a cross of 3 watermelon varieties (Melitopolskiy 143 x Kuzylbay x Charlestone Grey). Its breeder name Klavdiya Sincha is famous over the world. She is a mother of 40 great watermelon varieties during her 60 years of watermelon breeding since 1944.

And there were several delegations from USA there in XX century who were impressed by tasting old Russion varieties and took many seeds back from this place. So I believe many modern foreign OP and hybrid watermelon varieties have Russian ancestry
Kholodok has a typical oval shape for mid late Russian watermelons and you can keep it till New Year party (3-5 months). Usual weight is 7-30 kg, no overripe and the taste is improving after 1 month of storage.
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1 kg=2.2 lb , 1 m=39,37 in , 1 oz=28.35 g , 1 ft=30.48 cm , 1 lb= 0,4536 kg , 1 in=2.54 cm , 1 l = 0.26 gallon , 0 C=32 F

Andrey a.k.a. TOMATODOR

Last edited by Andrey_BY; January 14, 2018 at 02:40 AM.
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