You might have heard the story of how Nat’s great great-great-grandfather crossed the legendary Lawson watermelon with the Mountain Sweet watermelon in the 1840s. By the time of the Late Unpleasantness, the Bradford was the preferred watermelon of the South, so much so that growers routinely poisoned or, later, electrified their melons to discourage theft. With the advent of truck farming in the early 20th century, the Bradford became a dinosaur. Unwieldy at a 30 pound average, and prone to bursting due to its high water content, the Bradford didn’t meet with modern industrial standards and was last commercially harvested in 1922.
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