Growing winter melon plants – phase 2

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The male flower bud appears at the juncture of stem and leaf, and is a cute, cauldron-like shape.

After the hesitant start at the trellis, the winter melon plant decided to get the party started. It started growing bigger, healthier leaves, and as Novice Gardener predicted, had a very good growth spurt.

When it was about half a metre tall, the first flower bud appeared. Of course it was a male flower, and it eventually bloomed on an approximately 4cm stem.

Unlike other cucurbitaceae flowers – that we’ve grown, anyway – this was a rather robust looking flower. It was big and broad, and really opened up to display the strong anthers loaded with pollen within. I found the calyx to be bigger than our other cucurbitaceae plants, and actually rather pleasing to the eye with the broad, curly sepals supporting the flower petals. Everything about this flower made me think of strength.

Male winter melon flowers in a row - already done blooming at the bottom, now blooming in the middle, and right at the top, gonna bloom soon.

Of course, that made me actually start to look for information on growing winter melon plants, and that’s when I realized my trellis will probably not be strong enough to support fruits, if we’re lucky to get them. The bamboo sticks and string are probably not going to be able to bear the weight of the melons that I now understand can grow to several kilograms each, so some work needs to be done if the plant thrives.

And so far, it appears to be quite happy. I’ve been anxious about this plant because of the excessive rain we’ve been having recently. After all, the other winter melon plant we had growing died, possibly because of too much rain just after they were transplanted to the trellis. However, with the growth spurt and the appearance of flowers, I think this plant is happy and I’m raising my expectations to being cautiously optimistic.

A closer look at the male flower of the winter melon plant. I find it very striking for some reason.

The plant is now nearing the top of the 1.7-metre tall trellis and has been producing male flowers at each leaf juncture. So far, I’ve counted about 11 male flowers/buds. If this plants follows the trend of cucurbitaceae (that I’ve noticed anyway), once it peaks and leans over, the female flowers should start appearing. I can’t wait!

See Phase 1 of growing winter melon plants.

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Sneaky snails

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Always looking for a spot out of the wet weather, here these snails try to make their way up the slippery side of the fibreglass tank.

Garden snails are like ninjas. They’re silent, they come in the night, and they’re normally gone by the time you see your ravaged plants.

The wet weather seems to bring them out in full force, too. In fleeing the excessive dampness, they gravitate to higher ground. That usually means up any vertical surface. Lately, though, that’s also meant up my precious plants. I’ve found them at the pinnacle of my trellises, on plants, under the rim of flower pots and in all kinds of hidey-holes. They’ve even come into the house!

To most people, that would seem funny and cute, but to this disgruntled gardener, it has meant having good plants stripped of leaves necessary for plant growth.

Like my only white cucumber plant – killed before its prime.

Or up on my struggling burgundy okra plant. If the plant was a camel’s back then the snail was the straw that broke it. The plant has since died out because it lacked the leaves to keep it alive.

I thought this was really cute when I initially took this picture, but that was before the burgundy okra plant started struggling, and I realized the snails were contributing to the problem by consuming the leaves that were keeping the plant alive.

I don’t mind snails when they do what they’re supposed to, namely eat already discarded plant parts. They’re the best above ground decomposers in the garden – and I’m very happy to leave them offerings after doing pruning and weeding. Where I draw the line, however, is when they hurt my living plants. Just look at where I’ve found the latest culprits:

Another baby snail - all the way up the 2-metre high papaya tree! It was evicted immediately after this incriminating photo was taken.

If left alone, that snail could have eaten the flower buds, for all I know. And each papaya flower is especially precious now that our only male papaya tree is gone.

A small snail shares a bittergourd leaf with a caterpillar - more than a metre above ground level!

These shell-less slugs creep me out the most. They're quite flat and are able to hide in small spaces, usually undersides of pots and bricks.

If the snails are starting to seek living food then I think it’s time to cull their population just a little. Snail bait has been laid around the more precious of my surviving plants, and those sneaky snails had better heed the warning to go eat other things! It’s not like there isn’t enough plant matter around for them to feed on, especially after the recent trimming of the lawn and all the bits and pieces of grass, etc. nicely accumulated by the puddling rain. You could say that my live and let live policy only goes so far, so, snails, beware…!

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Bye bye Mr Papaya Tree

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The sad state the male Red Lady papaya tree was in before we said goodbye to it.

Well darn. Our one and only male Red Lady papaya tree has decided to leave us prematurely. Just last week we noticed that the leaves were starting to die out at the crown, while the rest of the leaves started turning yellow one by one, then brown, then hung limply on the tree as the stems weren’t ready to drop off just yet.

My best guess is that the tree couldn’t take the excessive wet weather. In fact, I’d like that to be the reason, rather than find out the tree was diseased. It is highly possible, though, as it’s common knowledge that papaya trees don’t like “wet feet”. The only problem with this is that the tree’s sisters only 2 metres away in either direction don’t seem to be suffering the same problem. Yet. Mr Papaya Tree actually felt a bit wobbly when the trunk was rocked a little, so that showed that the roots weren’t good any more.

Even the crown of the tree felt a little squishy when pinched. That being the case, we bade farewell to it and have our fingers crossed that our existing trees are hermaphrodites and not just females, otherwise it’s bye-bye to new Red Lady papayas. :(

Here are some of the highlights of Mr Red Lady Papaya Tree’s life:

Clusters of male papaya flowers. They will be missed.

A closer look at the male papaya flower.

The base of the male tree was significantly broader than the female trees. Looks like female papaya trees have "no hips" while the males do!

I guess it’s time to start sowing seeds again – if they’re still viable!

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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November veggies

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Our biggest harvest of winged beans so far!

It’s interesting to keep track of what has been thriving, even though it sometimes sounds repetitious. However, mentioning everything every month helps me to keep track of how long the plants keep producing, so do bear with me and my monthly summary… :)

Well, I have to start off with the four-angled beans. As mentioned a few days ago, the vines suddenly decided to keep setting fruits and we’re looking forward to a regular supply of these beans (knock on wood!). The more prolific they are, the younger we can harvest them to enjoy them when they’re really tender!

Our first bangkwang – or jicama or Mexican turnip – was also harvested this month!

The angled loofahs are still coming along. The vines still go through phases of producing fruits, then resting before starting to produce female flowers again. I wonder how many cycles they’ll have before they stop?

Green okra plants are doing well. I have a few plants of different ages to try to keep the supply going.

The burgundy okra plants, however, appear to be dying out. I’m not sure if it’s their normal life span or if they don’t like where they’ve been growing. However, the new leaves have been getting smaller and smaller, despite being fed compost and fertilizers, so I suppose their end is here.

The new, regular long bean plants have started fruiting. They’re quick to do so – once they reach the top of the trellis and start hanging over, the flower buds seem to start appearing. These, however, grow a bean at a time, as opposed to the thin long bean plants that produced maybe up to 4 beans per stem.

The thin long bean plant found its second wind and started setting fruits despite the sad state of its foliage.

Speaking of the thin long beans, the plants appeared to be dying out. I thought they were at the end of their life span, so started pruning the plants to clear the trellis. The usual decomposers were present – caterpillars, snails and beetles – so I believed the plants were through. A couple of things happened – first, I was interrupted in my pruning efforts, so parts of the plants were left on the trellis; second, I put fertilizer on some shrubs also growing at the base of the trellis. Next thing I know, the long bean vines started growing new leaves and flower buds! Right now, new beans are forming, so perhaps I was mistaken about the life span of these plants!

I’ve consolidated many of my kangkong plants into a single planter as opposed to the hanging bottle-pots. They actually do well growing in the recycled PET bottles, but I’m concerned because they get root-bound very fast, but more on that another time.

Speaking of recycled bottles, they don’t seem to be working with my chilli plants. A few months ago, I managed to grow some chilli plants from seeds from a fresh chilli. I planted each of them in individual recycled bottles that I had cut very close to the top so that they would be deep, thinking that they would be able to grow better than in shallow pots. Well, the plants seem to be indicating that they need to spread the roots sideways as well as downwards to grow well, because they’ve grown upwards more than sideways, and are not able to set fruits even though they do flower and are growing in good, rich soil.

New additions to the edible collection are Chinese parsley, coriander, Chinese chives and dill – all grown from seed. I haven’t had the best track record growing herbs, so we’ll see how these go…

The first green brinjal - not teriffically long at less than 20 cm.

Also new to the harvest category is the green aubergine. We’ve just harvested the first one. As with first fruits, it wasn’t very big, but as the skin was starting to lose its sheen, I felt it was better to harvest it than leave it just to see if it would grow bigger.

After taking a bit of a break, the purple brinjal plants are starting to fruit again. The plants growing in the ground are looking especially healthy and more tree-like while their counterparts growing in pots still look plant-like.

Last but certainly not least, we have the Kiwano and winter melon plants currently growing. I expect we’ll have fruits for the former in December since the female flowers have made their appearance. As for the winter melon, that’s still a journey in progress.

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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