Petey Greene says otherwise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eitsutpOc

nice idea!! good timing ow its summer and everyone is eating more watermelon, i friggin hate those bloody seeds they ruin the taste, ill certainly give it a go!!

Nice instructable, but the center is my favorite part! My favorite way to eat a watermelon is to just ignore the seeds and swallow them - it's actually not bad at all and provides such a drastically better watermelon experience.

My mum used to say that to me too :D

Do you mean that the watermelon seeds are edible and not poisonous? Cool!
I did not know that you can eat watermelon seeds, I always thought the seeds are poisonous because they are... umm.. black. Well that is interesting.

I totally agree about just swallowing the seeds. And contrary to what my granny used to say when I was a kid, I have yet to have a watermelon sprout in my stomach. ;)

I will keep you posted.

You're OBVIOUSLY doing it wrong.
new instructable: how to grow a watermelon plant in your stomach...

In nature this is just an effective method of seed dispersion. The animals eat it, they move, and they pass it back to the earth with their own "fertiliser"

Some seeds actually won't germinate unless they pass through an animal first. The seed coats (the hard outer covering) need to be scarified (cracked, nicked, or roughened up) to allow water into the seed to trigger germination.

Birds, as you may know, eat small rocks, which aid in the breakdown of hard seeds and grains. Some seeds are completely broken down and digested, and others will be scarified and then excreted.

Plants benefit from this in two ways. Because birds move around, seeds are dispersed a long distance from the plant. The excrement the seeds ultimately end up in also serves as a great beginning growing medium for the seeds.

I've actually heard a related myth that this crowd might find funny. A close friend who practiced a strict vegetarian (no animal products) raw foods-only (nothing cooked above 105 degrees) claimed that plants that produced "a fleshy covering of seed" (i.e. fruit) evolved to reproduce by dispersion of their seeds by mammals consuming their fruit. Further, my friend claimed that in nature, this was the perfect incubator for a seed, but that for a seed to germinate in the stool of a human, the human would have had to be following the same diet for at least long enough to remove everything from the digestive system beforehand. Anecdotally, he knew of a raw-veg woman who used this method to plant seeds in her garden!

So did she "sow a few seeds" a day or did she save it for a while and sow it all at once?

An excellent question. I would imagine the former rather than the latter.

I think that's doable, although I'll bet the germination period will take a looonnnngggg time. ;)

that is the best part of being the cook, you have to see if it was cooked correctly ;)

Actually, watermelon (as well as other seeds, especially citrus) contain trace amounts of cyanide. However, compared to all the toxins in cigarette smoke and second-hand smoke, no one usually drops dead immediately. So, I think swallowing a few watermelon seeds are OK. Heck, I do it all the ti.... (ka-plunk)

I dunno... I can't recall ever seeing anyone immediately drop dead from second-hand cigarette smoke, either. Those must be some really strong cigarettes in your area. Really tough smokers, too.

Apple seeds contain cyanide, watermelon seeds do not.

what about seed spitting contests???!!!?!!?! (yes it's an overuse of exclamation and question marks!)

For the records: watermelon seeds are a very good aphrodisiac!

Clarification: when he says the "CENTER" in step 4, he means the heart of the melon -- the very middle. When he talks about the "mushy" part, in step 3, he means the seedy ring *around* the center. He means that you should not spend two hours trying to strain the seeds out of that little ring around the middle -- just scoop out the mushy seedy part. SAVE the melon heart that is enclosed by the mushy part. Ok, now let's start over. You got your melon, see... *cough* Seeds.

HA! Well played.

this is a great idea! I'll have to try it - thanks!

(removed by poster)

sorry all the comments are on page one.

without you.

your not invited.

then, conserve resources by pickling and eating the rind too! "waste not..." and all that.

Nice instructable!

step 1 should just be buy seedless

Have you ever eaten seedless watermelon? It's way lower quality than seeded watermelon. There's a reason they don't have seeds; they are the inferior species.

the seedless personal watermelons are actually quite tasty, and I've never actually seen a seeded personal watermelon

I disagree, mattnico. I've had plenty of seedless watermelons that were just as good, if not better than regular watermelons.

Seedless=fail
Full of chemicals that dissolve your organs, they taste gross , and arent juicy enough.
Its just another sign that the world has become too reliant on artificial stuff than actually doing it yourselves...Or maybe the world is becoming lazy.

Whole Planet! Get back to your Roots Grow Your Own!

doesn't really matter if it's seedless or not if you fill the damn thing with booze. that will take care of them there organ problems!

im personally not a watermelon fan myself its just that buying seedless would be much easier

It depends on how you define easy. I've seen the seedless variety cost as much 14 times the price of the seeded variety in the same store on the same day. So if you consider the effort required to earn your money...

No, they're not full of chemicals... They are just a different species of melon.




http://ask.yahoo.com/20010611.html
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/CV006

Lol funny how you editiditiedidited the the second picture instead of actually cutting it.

very nice. but i would like to know the difference between the "wastfull overripe" part and the center. i mut have missed that

Yeah I don't know what he's talking about either. The center is usually the best part.

....I think he means the area right around where a seed is...it can be mushy sometimes.....

swallow the seeds!!!

Save the center for yourself! Hee hee, I like that. Thomas Keller (one of the world's top chefs), in his roast chicken recipe, calls the crispy tail "the cook's reward."