The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

Week-old winter melon

Posted on November 4, 2012 by CuriousG

Look at the size of this winter melon baby! And it’s only a week old!

Just imagine that one week ago, this was a blooming fruit flower on the winter melon vine.

And just imagine that come one more week, I could potentially harvest this from the vine!

From my quick search on the Net to confirm the appropriate range, I’ve found that you can harvest the winter melon when it is between 2 and 8 weeks old. Last year, our first fruit remained on the vine for 6 weeks before we were sure it wasn’t going to grow any bigger. Only then did we pluck it.

We were such nervous “parents” with the first baby…

I am naturally watching the development of this fruit carefully. It is growing on a vine that is dangling down from the trellis. I’ve found that the female flower buds seem to be sensitive to movement, because whenever I’ve re-positioned a drooping vine while the female bud was still developing on it, the bud tended to abort. That’s why I left this hanging vine alone. And this is why the fruit is now about a metre off the ground. The tip of this vine is almost touching the ground and I’m wondering if I should let it take root so that the vine can draw more nutrients from a new point – assuming that it will behave like a pumpkin or sweet potato vine. I have to admit that knowing it is rooted at a single spot makes me edgy…

Besides that, I yesterday found a few hard, shiny brown spots stuck to the fruit. Afraid that they were insect eggs or something harmful to the fruit, I removed them immediately. They seemed to be slightly embedded in the skin, and I am hoping we will not find anything other than seeds inside when we harvest the fruit.

Well, we just have to wait at least one more week – although it will likely be longer, if the fruit continues to look healthy – before we harvest it. Stay tuned!

Shy pumpkin flowers

Posted on November 3, 2012 by CuriousG

The first pumpkin fruit flower bud, now immortalized here. I initially thought this was a butternut pumpkin flower, but alas, have been informed that I was given the wrong identity of the pumpkin. From the looks of it, this will be a regular-shaped pumpkin, and beyond that, who knows? We are just thrilled to potentially have pumpkins growing here!

We’ve finally seen female flowers on our one and only pumpkin vine! The first was spotted two weeks ago about a metre back from the growing tip of the main vine (there are a few branches now). However, the hot and dry weather at the time caused the bud to abort.

Last week, though, I noticed not one, but three more buds a-forming! Again, the weather caused them to start turning yellow, and one has already fallen off. I’m not too upset, because I reckon the flowers will come when they’re good and ready. Besides that, the weather is cooler now, bringing its own set of issues such as powdery mildew on the leaves, and our forever garden foes, snails. That’s a gardener’s life, isn’t it?

Addendum: If you read this post when I first published it, you would have read that I identified it as a butternut pumpkin. Well, it’s not, and neither I nor the gardener I got the seeds from can tell what kind of pumpkin it is, not until it bears fruit. It’s a good thing I’m the Curious Gardener! We shall see how this mystery unfolds, when it unfolds… This has just reminded us that we need to label our saved and planted seeds properly. LOL!

The winter melon romance continues

Posted on November 1, 2012 by CuriousG

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!

Romancing the winter melon

Posted on October 30, 2012 by CuriousG

I’ve given up watching the winter melon vines like a hawk. Although there have been several fruit flowers, none have set fruit, and all we’ve seen were these:

No-go female winter melon flower that usually looks promising when it blooms, but starts shriveling and turning yellow after a couple of days.

Last weekend, I was showing my 11-year-old niece around the garden, and she was knowledgeably telling me about the need to grow flowers like sweet peas to attract pollinating insects to the garden. Her eyes opened wide when I told her that we can hand-pollinate flowers if pollinating insects are infrequent. Since we were at the winter melon plants at the time, and there were two vines hanging conveniently in front of us, I demonstrated how to touch the male and female flowers together. This became a game of letting the flowers “kiss” each other. Well…

…that turned out to be a productive lesson, because:

The lucky female flower that had been pollinated by a few male flowers now looks like it is growing into a fruit!

It looks like we may finally have a fruit growing! If this was a result of my lesson, then it appears that the winter melon likes to have multiple “suitors”, because my niece insisted on choosing different male flowers to pollinate the fruit flower. Maybe I should engage her matchmaking services more often!

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