Art Combe's Ancient Watermelon Plant

Pre-ordering is now closed.  Please come visit us at our in-person sales, listed below.

This melon has a green rind and succulent red flesh that is of excellent flavor and sweetness. It is a beautiful melon, easy to grow and producing fruit up to 20 lbs. One of the most fascinating seed discoveries in modern history! In the early 1920s, Art Combe, a Southwestern plant expert and amateur prospector, found a small woven pot filled with bright red watermelon seeds in an abandoned sandstone cave in Arizona’s Mogollon Rim. The red seeds are believed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old! Art planted the seeds and just a few germinated. The fruit was small and crooknecked, unlike any other watermelon he had ever seen before, but the flavor was incredible! Art grew this ancient Native American watermelon for several decades, selecting the largest and most round specimens. The result of decades of selecting is a superb extra large watermelon with bright red extra sweet flesh. (Some fruit may still have necks.) Art used a dry farming technique that allowed him to grow extra sweet watermelons with almost no irrigation in the searing hot desert; these watermelons are extremely heat and drought tolerant!  4" pot.

Alternatively, you can visit our farm's Annual Plant Sale in person,
with availability on a first-come, first-served basis on:
9am -2pm  Fri & Sat
May 3 & 4 and May 10 & 11
or at the Maker’s Market on May 25th and June 1st.