Surge of winged beans!

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What we've seen before - a bean here, a bean there... errr, we've done that...

You know I’ve been complaining for months about the lack of beans on our four-angled bean vines. I had planted six seeds and all sprouted and grew, so I had great expectations of a bountiful crop.

However, weeks and months went by and we only got the occasional bean. Besides the poor harvest, my tardiness in weeding led to our gardeners severing three of the vines when cutting the grass.

I persevered, continuing to tempt the plants by using different fertilizers and organic compost. Nothing outstanding happened. I even had my fingers crossed that the rainy weather would induce more fruits, but again nothing changed noticeably.

What we hope to keep seeing - bunches of beans. Do you see the 4 beans in this picture? They're of different sizes - big, medium and small!

A few days ago, I noticed a half grown bean midway up the vine. It’s normal to get the occasional winged bean. Then, I noticed another one right at the top of the trellis. It was rather big, so I decided to get the ladder out to harvest it.

Then, since I was up there, I decided to start stripping away the dead vines – the ones severed by the gardeners. There was quite a lot to remove – including a dried bean that I kept for the seeds inside – and when I was done, the vines looked healthy and green.

While admiring the foliage, I suddenly noticed yet another half grown bean … and then a baby one, and then another! With shock, I realized there were beans forming in several places, and I was astounded!

Obviously, something had happened recently to have caused this sudden setting of fruits. Mind you, bean flowers have bloomed over the months, but they’ve tended to abort. That was why I’d been trying different fertilizers every week or fortnight. The last one I remember applying was blood and bone – a new fertilizer in our garden that I decided to try because it claimed to help microbial action of the soil and to boost plant growth. Maybe it was the thing that tipped the scales and got the beans forming, but it was likely a combination of everything – a happy accident that I can’t remember the formula of. I just hope this is a lasting effect. Maybe now our winged bean vines will live up to the reputation of being prolific producers!

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Kiwano ladies

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Female kiwano flower bud with the miniature fruit behind the bud.

When growing fruiting vines, what a gardener wants to see are – not just any flower, but female flowers. Male flowers are normally pretty, plentiful and have their uses, but those more rare female flowers bear the promise of things literally coming to fruition.

So you can guess that I’ve been avidly scanning our kiwano trellis on a daily basis, particularly after it started budding with male flowers – and once it started budding, it went all out, and there are many cute pale yellow flowers adorning the trellis today. Of course once the guys appeared, I wanted the gals to join the party. I was so anxious that there were a few false alarms – swelling protrusions on the stems that I hoped were female buds, but were just more leaf growth. And when the female buds did appear, as with most first attempts, they aborted.

As is the usual case – with me, anyway – the first successful female flowers managed to slip past my surveillance. Blame the spiky, scratchy foliage of the kiwano vine for that. I so hate getting scratched by the plant that I don’t look as thoroughly as I could, and since the vine is extremely prolific, I avoid touching it to peer under all the foliage. It’s reached the stage where I’ve started pruning the more adventurous stems trying to lean out and attach themselves to anything around the trellis. And who knows, maybe the pruning has startled the plant into finally producing proper female flowers.

A very close look at the baby horned melon shows what looks like juicy fruit pips, but you can bet those spiky tips are going to hurt!

As you know, the kiwano is also known as the horned melon, and the tiny fruits behind the female flowers are showing evidence of this. Up close and personal they look like they’re covered with juicy green pips, but each “pip” has a sharp looking point reminiscent of our local favourite fruit, the durian. I’ve tested the kiwano fruit tips – gingerly – and yes, they are a little sharp. They could be worse, though. Anyway from the picture of the kiwano fruit on the seed packet, the “horns” should spread out, so it should look less durian-like when it matures.

So the good news is, the fruits are on the way! Time to start looking for recipes and serving suggestions…

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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The biggest Red Lady papaya

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The biggest papaya prior to harvest.

We’ve been enjoying eating the Red Lady papayas for a few weeks now. The fruits ripen at the rate of perhaps one fruit per week, and there have been only two incidents with the birds so far – once, it looked like a bird landed on the fruit and tried to grip with its claws, because there were a few parallel scratches in the pattern of a bird’s foot.

The second incident was when a bird managed to peck once into the fruit before I came to harvest it. Silly bird – it should have eaten faster because I aim to deny them these fruits…

Well, this second incident involves the topic of this post – the largest Red Lady papaya that has grown here so far.

I had been watching with great interest as the fruits grew on the tree. They were such a cute, round shape – and of course, they have a place of pride in my heart because they’re special commercial grade plants. So, it was with interest that I noticed one of the fruits growing obviously bigger and longer than the others, and I was intrigued.

Displaying the heaviest weight of all the Red Lady papayas so far - 1.65kg!

The previously harvested fruits were all well below the 1 kg mark – anything between 600 to 800 grams. They were small but packed with flavour. Now, this fruit weighed in at a hefty 1.65kg! That’s more than three times the weight of the first harvested fruit, which was just below 500 grams.

It’s no surprise then that the bird that pecked into the fruit was as attracted to it as I was!

So far, though, our Red Lady papaya fruits have not conformed to the description on the seed distributor’s site. They have been rounded rather than short-oblong (until this fruit), their flesh is orange rather than red, and they have been seedless so far. But they have been sweet – very, very sweet…

I can’t complain about the lack of seeds any more as this latest fruit, finally, has some seeds. If I had to guess about this, I’d say that the flower for this fruit was blooming at the same time that our male papaya tree had finally started flowering, and pollination was able to take place.

The first Red Lady papaya to have seeds.

This sure would explain why the earlier fruits had no seeds, but not why they developed into fruits. According to the seed distributor site, that fruits on hermaphrodite trees are slightly elongated. So, I’m rather confused, because our fruits have been more round than long, so that should make the tree female. Right? So how did it produce fruits before the male tree matured?

However, I’m not going to complain about having fruits. Fruits are good , and we’re happy to get them. :)

And no, we won’t bother trying to plant the seeds from the fruit, because the Red Lady papaya is a hybrid, and hybrid seeds do not carry over all the characteristics of the first generation of the plant. Such is the price of dabbling in genetics.

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Grasshopper + sunflower = no flower

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Blasted grasshopper decimating a small sunflower!

It appears to be grasshopper season again.

I had a few small sunflowers growing in a planter, and noticed that the leaves were being eaten. My first conclusion was that it would be caterpillars, but I discovered a pair of juvenile green grasshoppers instead. I chased them off daily, not wanting to kill them, but of course they kept coming back. However, there was enough foliage to sustain the plants, so I was satisfied with that.

In due time, the plants budded and flowered. We were happy to see the cheery yellow flowers, especially with all the rainy weather dampening things so much, and for a few days, all was well.

Then came the day when I noticed half a flower missing.

Missing?

Yes, missing. And seated atop the carnage was one of the grasshoppers. It had eaten half the flower, happily munching on the juicy little florets that, in time, should have become sunflower seeds.

You know, if these little creatures hadn’t been absent for many, many years, I would be much less tolerant of this grasshopper. But perhaps I’ve mellowed and have learned to accept that nature works in ways that I may not like, and maybe the grasshoppers are serving a function that I haven’t learned to appreciate yet, just like the aphids that I hated but ended up bringing ladybugs here. Live and let live, right?

Besides, I know that there are several garden creatures that feed on grasshoppers, so I can live with this. And, if I really want to put a positive spin on things, I can tell you that I’ve discovered that grasshoppers eat flowers – I thought they only liked leaves. Of course, if they had attacked one of my rare sunflowers, I would now be cursing until I’m blue in the face…

© 2011 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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