A lesson in fruiting vines

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Pretty much a U-shaped trellis for the bittergourd - once the vine reaches the end, I turn it back onto itself.

After several months of growing vining edible plants, I think I’ve realized a few things.

First, the vine has to grow to a certain length before it is matured enough to start producing good fruits. My sad excuses of trellises for my beans probably resulted in their short lives. I still haven’t had time to construct bigger trellises, so I haven’t had a chance to prove this theory with the legumes.

However, in the case of my bittergourd vine, I’ve been turning the vines back on themselves to keep them on the little trellis, and that seems to have worked. To date, we’ve enjoyed many of the tiny fruits – as have the birds, because I don’t always spot the fruits in time.

The angled loofah vine has also been growing, despite my lack of attention to it. Yes, the vine that I expected to weave itself into the chain link fence instead made its way to the top of the fence, where the light was strongest. It then kept growing along the very top of the fence like it was a private highway, and I lost sight of it as it passed behind a shed. However, peering around the roof from time to time revealed flowers but no fruits.

The loofah that escaped my attention because it was hidden behind the fence support. What a pity - it was a whopping 47cm long!

The older part of the vine began to shed leaves, and caterpillars once again voraciously ate more leaves, and I thought it was another goner. So even though the tip of the vine kept on growing along the top of the fence and then weaving itself through a taller bushy plant growing there, I lost interest in it.

Well, guess what?

It didn’t die and it actually fruited! I just discovered the first natural loofah hiding behind a fence support! I say “natural” because the first fruit was the one I got from hand-pollination months ago, that didn’t grow to full size. This one is much, much bigger, but unfortunately a bit too old for eating because I didn’t see it sooner.

The good thing is that once I noticed it, further inspection revealed another two fruits that can be harvested soon. One was hiding behind the shed roof, and the other, within the bushy plant. I can see that spotting subsequent fruits will be an interesting challenge because they’ll probably be somewhere in the middle of the other plant!

The other loofah that escaped notice because it was behind the shed roof.

So, lesson one: give the vine plenty of room to grow. I’d estimate the loofah vine to be more than 10 metres long now.

Lesson two: don’t try to force it to bear fruit via hand-pollination. When it’s good and ready, it will do what comes naturally, and it will do it well.

The final (for now) loofah that was missed because it's intertwined with another plant.

I guess I now have to eat my words about the loofah being a dismal failure, but I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something! :D

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Red Lady Papaya transplant

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It’s said that papaya plants don’t take kindly to being transplanted. I intended to adhere to that rule, I really did. So I planted four pairs of Red Lady papaya seeds directly where I wanted my trees to grow, intending to cull the weaker seedlings.

The papaya plant a week after being transplanted.

Weak-hearted creature that I am, I couldn’t bear to kill a perfectly well, if slower, growing plant. Especially when the pair in question were growing much faster than all the other seedlings.

Firmly in Doubting Thomas mode, I removed the smaller of the two young plants, grateful that I’d prepared the ground so well, because the soil was still very loose, and the plant came out easily and with minor damage to the roots. It was planted in a new location that was generously filled with compost, and then I sat back to wait.

A number of leaves dried up and dropped off. In fact, the entire little plant drooped right to the ground, all 5cm of it. I thought it would leave it’s little head on the ground and simply expire quietly.

At the same time, we were enjoying a short stretch of cool, rainy weather. This probably helped to minimize the transplant shock. To my pleasant surprise, the plant raised it’s head and straightened up. Shedding the excess leaves seemed to help, too. In just over a week, it seemed settled into the new home, and barring rampaging dogs and hungry snails, I think it will be able to grow happily to adulthood.

More on the Red Lady papaya saga…

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Our temperamental Bauhinia

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Our bauhinia plant - lush, with luscious flowers.

We had a dog more than 10 years ago who was a real escape artist. Whenever the mood struck, he’d find a way to get out for a romp around the neighbourhood. Sometimes, he’d slip out when the gate was open. Other times, he’d find or create an opening in the aged chain link fence. When we changed the fence to one that was reinforced with bricks at the bottom, he somehow psyched himself to become a superdog, and learned to jump high enough to lever himself over the top of the 6-foot fence and escape yet again! While the bottom of the fence was brick, the top was still chain link with woven strips of metal, and my “superdog” managed to bend it out of shape with his daily excursions in and out. Mind you, he didn’t hurdle over it; he jumped high enough to claw and pull himself over it – no laughing matter as it was high from the ground, and he was, well, a boy dog. :| So there we were, with a new fence that was already damaged, and I wanted to hide that as quickly as possible with a nice, thick-growing and pretty creeping plant.

That’s where the bauhinia came in.

We’d seen this lovely, thick foliaged plant growing in gardens and along some of our nicely landscaped roads in Singapore and just fell in love with the big clusters of deep orange flowers. It seemed like just the thing to conceal our ugly fence and help us forget that it was damaged.

One of my aunts had a lovely trellis of bauhinia in her garden, and she gave us seeds and cuttings together with the caution that it was a difficult plant to propagate. I was over-optimistic and she was right. We never managed to get a seed to sprout, nor a cutting to survive, and had to resort to buying a young plant from the nursery.

I eagerly planted the 40cm high plant by the fence, and waited impatiently for it to grow and hide the evidence of my dog’s bad behaviour. It’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath waiting, because I’d be dead by now. That plant sat there, shedding and growing new leaves for about two years, but didn’t grow any taller. We amended the soil and put all kinds of fertilizers and enticements to grow, but it absolutely refused to do anything more.

The fish that got the plant growing.

Then, one day, one of my favourite aquarium fish died. I decided to bury it by the bauhinia plant. It seemed appropriate – the fish was a rosy barb – orange in colour, as were the flowers of the bauhinia plant.

I didn’t expect anything to happen – by this time I was pretty jaded with our bauhinia – but within weeks, the plant suddenly exploded with growth! I had to scramble and set up supporting stakes to train it to grow upwards to (finally!) cover up the ugly fence.

From that point, there was no stopping the plant. It grew up, spread along the top of the fence and did what we’d wanted it to do. Then it began to ramble onto and all over a palm tree clump that we had planted near the wall when we thought the bauhinia wasn’t going to take off. Needless to say, the bauhinia plant is well established now and I am much more relaxed where it is concerned. It doesn’t need any more special treatment, although I once in a while toss some fertilizer it’s way. But I don’t need to, really, because the roots have grown quite a ways along the wall, running near other plants that do receive fertilizers on a regular basis.

The flowers are stunning when the plant is in bloom – and it usually is, most of the time. Passersby occasionally help themselves to cuttings and flowers, and neighbours have asked for seeds and cuttings. The plant produces seed pods occasionally – short, broad ones with maybe a pair of seeds inside – but it’s not easy to get those seeds to germinate either. We’ve found that it’s best to let Mother Nature do her job, and on the rare occasion do we discover seedlings growing beneath the mother plant. They’re finicky plants, and have a high mortality rate when young. However, once established, they’re a joy to look at and a pain to prune – because the plant will spread everywhere if left unchecked. So be warned – this plant may be a slow starter, but it will accelerate and keep going when it’s good and ready. It’s a good thing the flowers make it all worthwhile!

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Another look at seed dispersal by birds

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Here’s what happens when a bird disperses the seed of the fruit it eats:

Seed sprouting amidst some bird droppings.

Well, it’s supposed to land on soil, not a hard, unyielding surface. Nevertheless, I was intrigued that the seed managed to sprout and live briefly in the bird’s droppings.

This happened to land beneath a tree during one of the rainy spells we had. Unfortunately, I forgot to check back on it for a few days, and the seedling died.

You see something new every day, don’t you?

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