Square Watermelon
Those clever Japanese farmers, always coming up with another way to make food aesthetically pleasing as well as practical. While browsing at Urban Fare, I glimpsed the future of fruit, Japanese-style: square watermelon.
When I first saw the square watermelon, the immediate thought that entered my mind: genetically modified watermelon?! How did that get approved without me hearing about it? As it turns out, the watermelons themselves are entirely natural, their shape a product of the method used to shape the melon while it is still growing.
A farmer in Zentsuji, realizing the value of Japanese refrigerator real-estate, invented a way to create the fruit by growing them in glass boxes until they are 19cm square. The result is a cube-shaped fruit that fits easily on the refrigerator shelves of grocery stores and consumers alike with a minimum of wasted space.
The fruit don’t come cheap, with only 400 fruit available for purchase in the world this year. The Shima Oh variety shown at Urban Fare retail at CDN$ 99, so don’t expect to see it at your next barbeque. That said, it will be interesting to see what other fruit can be cubified using the same technique, if only for the potential to avoid fruit rolling down the grocery aisle.
Of course, the part I dread is the day they can make cubic fruit genetically, without the glass boxes.
Wonderful grammer
Weird. I can’t figure out if that comment was sarcastic or not. A quick re-read of the entry revealed two minor spelling errors, but it seems fine otherwise. Am I missing something?
While I admit that my writing style sometimes is fairly conversational (for example: the first sentence should be something like “Those clever Japanese farmers are always…”), I usually try to remain within the bounds of grammatical correctness. Am I committing some terrible grammatical faux-pas of which I’m not aware? Or am I misconstruing an authentic compliment?
Given the Internet’s perpensity for anonymous dung-flinging, I’m inclined to believe it’s probably the former not the latter. Feel free to correct me as you see fit.
I, too, thought the comment from Bryan was weird. Not sure what he meant. He did mispell grammar, though.
Incidentally, it appears that there are also pyramid-shaped watermelons too!
My mom and I did this back in 1968. The news story was picked up by AP. We had a garden already, so I built an expandible box out of clear plastic, found a watermelon with a flat side, and slipped it in. The finished product was unveiled in the office of the University of Alabama Information Service, with then University President David Matthews sampling the fruit.
Wish we had patented this idea…….
I think Brian was refering to you talking about the GENERICALLY modified fruit rather than the GENETICALLY modified fruit. That’s all….but I knew what you meant….lolol.
Whoops! Finally bothered to fix that “generically”. D’oh!
WHat type of watermelon r they growing?
looks like crimson red.
Square Watermelons
Today Drudge broke the news on Square Watermelons. One Problem, they are over 4 years old. ahhh well, noobs will think its cool….
What kind of water melon did you use?
How did you build the expandable box?
Sorry godfrey123, I have no details on the process used to create these watermelons. Perhaps the mighty Google can help you out in that department.
give me a break with the grammar comments! This article is about Watermelons! Fools!
i am researching for a report on gentetically modofied watermelon, and i thought that the square watermelon was quite interseting!! but its not what i was looking for!!!
i believe brian was commenting on your incorrect use of ‘cubic’ rather than using the word cube or cubes or cubed or cubicle (i.e., a block with six sides). and, yes, i believe his grammer with an ‘e’ was a joke as well.
Ah, right. Changed it to “cube-shaped”. Let the grammar gods be appeased and reward us with offerings of new words and pronunciations.