Watermelon, Sürme

Sürme isn’t only a very old traditional watermelon from Diyarbakır, Turkey, but it also has a special place in my childhood memories. This watermelon was once very well known all over the country, thanks to its outstanding sweet flavor, excellent flesh texture and exceptionally large fruit size. I have vivid memories of seeing the round, light green fruits with dark green stripes at grocery stores, and I will always remember the time when one of my uncles took me to a grocery store before a big family gathering to select the best fruit with me for our meal that day. A lot of watermelon tapping was involved!

Once a staple commercial watermelon as well, Sürme, was replaced with hybrid varieties back in early 2000’s due to the increasing demand for smaller size fruits, shrinking families and increasing industrial interest in seedless watermelons. Hence, introducing the seed in our catalog comes with a strong sense of responsibility for us especially because we are the only retail commercial source for this seed in and out of Turkey. We had to be even more tedious in our seed evaluation and production process to satisfy the authenticity of the seeds we have evaluated while making sure the seeds stay true to the traditional narrative and plant characteristics.

Stewardship of culturally significant seeds, while simultaneously producing those seeds for a commercial seed catalog, is a challenging process. It took us many seasons and so many seed evaluations in our farm field to bring the seed selection process for Diyarbakır’s staple traditional watermelon pictured above to a level where we can which we finally feel good about.

In 2026, we closely worked with our friend and seed grower, Hank Keogh (Corvallis, OR) to do the final evaluation of our seed and grow stock seed for our catalog. Hank patiently walked us through the seed selection process via photos, and when needed, pulled rogue plants, eliminated outliers, and compared phenotypes to successfully bring the seeds from fruits to our catalog. Fingers crossed, you will see this childhood love of mine, back in our fall catalog more than 10 years after we lost it to a cross pollination accident back then.

Every year, a traditional “largest watermelon” competition is held in Diyarbakir to promote  and encourage the stewardship of Sürme. Fruits can weigh as much as 100-150 lbs there, and although we don’t think they will get that big here in the United States, thousands of miles away from its homeland, expect to harvest fairly large fruits.

Commercially introduced by us

Packet has min. 15 seeds

Phonetically pronounced: