Winter melon surprise

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Still nice and fresh after a month!

It’s been about a month since we harvested our first winter melon fruit, and the poor fruit had to bear the indignity of being a conversation piece ever since. I wasn’t too concerned as I’d heard somewhere that melons and pumpkins can last for six and more months thanks to their thick skins that provide the best “packaging” since they were created by Mother Nature herself. However, rapping gently on the skin of the fruit this week, I heard a new hollow sound, and decided it was time to introduce the winter melon to the cooking pot.

Cutting it open, we found it still nice and juicy. Not so distinct, but still visible, were the six segments at the middle, with lots of seeds embedded in the soft, spongy pith. That was removed prior to cooking, and I naturally started sorting through the seeds for the biggest, fattest seeds to store. It’s an automatic reaction and I make no excuses for it.

What surprised me was finding a single sprout in the midst of all the seeds! It didn’t have leaves formed yet, nor developed roots, but it was definitely a stem of a sprout!

The sprout that was found inside the winter melon. I think we cut one end when we cut it open.

What’s more, I noticed that a few of the seeds had also cracked open and had something pale green poking out. Some of them were simply the seeds within the seed coat, but a couple were…

I can't believe that these seeds started germinating within the month-old harvested winter melon, but they did!

…little seed leaves slowly unfurling!

What this leads me to conclude is, if you keep a winter melon plucked ripe from the vine long enough, the seeds inside the fruit will start germinating on their own. So, while we’re still waiting for our vine to decide whether or not it’s going to grow big again…

Our winter melon plant has been cut back to just this, and the leaves are coming very slowly. Fertilizer and volcanic soil has been added, and we're waiting to see how the plant responds.

…we can start a new generation growing, just in case.

Oh yes, and the introduction of the winter melon to the cooking pot went very, very well! 8)

 

A marriage made in heaven - winter melon in pork rib soup!

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Ginger babies

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Small ginger rhizome that was rescued and transplanted.

More than two years ago, I planted a stretch of culinary ginger plants that I had expected to grow and thrive. Little did I realize that my expectations would be dashed. For some reason, our dogs began to run through that area, and they trampled my little ginger sprouts so much that the plants had to struggle to stay alive, even though I had ringed them with stones.

I consider ginger a long-term plant that you plant and leave to its own devices for months. Following permaculture principles, such plants should be planted in a “far away zone”, so they had been planted in the back of the garden, where I don’t visit often. No thanks to this, I didn’t realize that the dogs had knocked the stones awry, and with my usual signal to the gardeners to Stay Away gone, the baby plants were mowed down.

Long story short, I thought the plants had all died out, but had a pleasant surprise recently when I realized that some of them were still alive. What I thought were blades of green grass were actually the leaves of little ginger sprouts! (The way to be sure is to slightly crush the leaves to get the scent of ginger.)

Although this looks rather like a spider with a plant growing out of it, it's just the smallest ginger rhizome I managed to rescue.

A careful search along that stretch allowed me to recover six baby ginger plants. All of them had a bit of rhizome attached, from small to almost-there. Yes, they were really small! One plant even fell off the tiny bit of rhizome when I picked it up.

I transplanted all of them – two to pots where I could monitor them, and the rest in my old compost pit which is shaded by the mango tree. They all seem stable now, and I’m so grateful that plants are always so forgiving and hardy in that they will keep trying to adapt and grow despite the growing conditions surrounding them.

This is not to say that ginger is a hardy plant like the jicama is; I’ve had some ginger plants that had rotted at the roots, leaving empty rhizomes behind. That probably happened to the other baby ginger plants that died off. However, I’m happy to have these survivors. Here’s wishing them luck in growing to adulthood!

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Pumpkin sprouts arising

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The pair of butternut pumpkin sprouts, with the oldest plant sporting the first true leaf.

 

It seems like we’ve gone from no pumpkin plants to several pumpkin plants in no time at all.

I usually don’t like to sow single seeds at a time, and in the case of the pumpkin, I had my doubts about the seeds germinating at all.

Why?

Well, I had no success with the Jack of All Trades pumpkin seeds that I got from Novice Gardener last year – seeds that grew well for her. After my attempts, I became convinced that pumpkin plants just didn’t like the microclimate here.

So, it was with a mental roll of the dice that I sowed a pair of seeds each of the Butternut pumpkin from Novice G and the generic (I think) pumpkin from The Weed just over a week ago. Getting one plant out of the four would have delighted me.

Well, the first to pop up was one of the Butternuts, and I was thrilled! But, I think I’m in the mood for new plants, and the seeds sensed it, because one of Weed’s pumpkin plants decided to show up and say hi next.

One of the pumpkin sprouts made me chuckle as the seed case didn't drop off immediately and trapped the seed leaves. I do like the way the seed burst out from the earth so dramatically!

I was over the moon! As long as I can keep the plants alive, we could possibly have two different types of pumpkins growing in our garden!

It didn’t end there, though, because the other two seeds didn’t want to be left out, and they’ve both come out to play as well!

So right now, I’m the proud mama of four little pumpkin plants, and I am going to have to consider very carefully where I let them grow, because my four-legged companions (dogs, in case you were puzzled) are as curious about things as I am, and tend to go tromping through all our plants, regardless of whether there’s a barrier around the plants or not.

Can you just picture the demise of future, precious pumpkin flowers? :(

The great thing, though, is that the plants are growing – and they are going to be transplanted into bigger pots before they get pot-bound so that they get every possible advantage I can give them.

So thank you to Novice G and Weed for the seeds; I’m now following in your wakes…

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New sprouts

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Our first-ever pumpkin sprout: the Butternut pumpkin!

I’ve been a little lax about sowing new seeds over the last couple of months. I guess it’s because it finally occurred to me that late December to late February is not the most ideal time to have young, vulnerable plants around. During that time, the dry monsoons suck the moisture out of the air and ground, and I had quite a few plant losses that discouraged me from starting anything new.

Thankfully, the rainy weather appears to be back, and although it’s rather humid on some days, the temperatures have been delightfully cool overnight. It seemed appropriate to start growing new plants again.

Besides that, I’ve been looking through the seeds that I’ve exchanged with a couple of my gardening buddies, and I think it’s time to get some new plants growing in our garden.

Beet sprouts - I love the colour contrast between the vibrant stem and muted green leaves!

Don’t even consider that I love to watch how seeds germinate and start growing. It’s such a lovely affirmation of the cycle of life to see how a tiny, dormant thing like a seed gets into action and grows into an incredible fruit- or flower-bearing plant.

So, while I haven’t sown all the new seeds, several have been buried in germinating pots, and have started to say hello to the world.

My buddy The Weed generously shared seeds for beets, white radish, Simba beans, pumpkins and Mammoth sunflowers. So far, only the pumpkin hasn’t started growing yet.

I’ve finally (not sure why I delayed so long) sowed Hami melon and butternut pumpkin seeds that I got from Novice Gardener. To my surprise, both of them have one sprout each! I don’t know why, but I keep thinking that fruit vegetables like pumpkins and melons can only grow overseas, so this will be interesting for me. It’s part of my Doubting Thomas mentality rearing its head – I won’t believe it until I harvest the fruits in our garden!

Following the examples from Weed and Novice Gardener, I've planted my white radish seedlings in converted PET bottles that are cut closer to the top so the plants have more depth to grow in.

From my own stock of seeds, I’ve decided to attempt growing sweet peas again. The weather seems more friendly towards sweet peas, I think, so let’s hope for more than a single, hardly-formed bean this time!

I also started a new set of kangkong plants from seeds that I harvested from our plants last June. They’re still very viable, and I hope we’ll get to eat more than we use for mulch this time…

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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