I’m thrilled to share that the “romanced” winter melon is indeed growing as a fruit now. Here it is just two days after my last report:

The winter melon fruit today. Isn’t it growing fast?

And it looks like it is going into the exponential growth stage! I have high hopes for this fruit to exceed the size of our first fruit, aka the Little Monster. Just look at the fruit stem:

Just look at that nice, thick healthy winter melon stem!

It’s nice and thick; hopefully a signal that it is set to feed the growing fruit well.

More great news – I think there’s a second fruit growing on a different branch of the vine:

Will this or won’t this start growing as a winter melon? I think it will!

We will know for sure in a couple of days, but it looks similar to the first fruit, so my hopes are up.

Yes, we are currently down to one healthy vine. Interestingly, it is growing in a big pot – but, it’s a cracked pot, and I deliberately left the drainage holes open so that the vine could take root if it desired to. I find it ironic that this vine is happy while the other that is planted directly in the ground, is not. Maybe the pot provides shade that retains moisture while the one planted directly loses moisture faster. It’s not an easy question to answer, what with our nutty several-days-hot-and-dry versus torrential-downpour Singapore weather. Once I figure out the secret, you can bet I’ll be following it forever!

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