Volunteer Watermelon a Sweet Surprise

Sometime in May I must have dropped some seeds in the grass by my back porch or its possible that someone spit out some watermelon seeds while eating outside(who eats seeded watermelon anymore? I can hardly find it at the store!) It wasn't long before a volunteer watermelon plant came up in the grass right outside my back door.

 I was tempted to pluck it out but  decided to let it grow because you just never know what you might get. Volunteers usually don't produce good fruit so I didn't expect to harvest anything at all but some beautiful greenery. I was patient with the growing vine, moved it out of the way for lawn mowing, kept watering it, and gave it some vertical support.

 Well as you can see in the photos below, I got a lot more than expected.

 There are three melons on the vine and the largest one must weigh 15 lbs. What a sweet surprise! I haven't grown watermelon that well in my SFG!

 I'm going to wait for the leaf nearest the melon stem to brown before even thinking about picking it.  Bugs give a harvesting hint as well because they smell the sweet fragrance of the ripe melon and like to hang around. Sometimes it pay to leave those volunteers plants growing....I hope its sweet!