I have always been interested in the natural sciences. My background is in plant science. At this stage in my life I am not using my training and education in my occupation, so I feel compelled to garden. Makes sense, I guess. My garden is a slow work in progress.
Plans for Summer 2024
Definitely more winter melon for pickling, more winter squash (butternut, acorn, and once more shot at delicata), one or two lemon cucumber, and more.
Highlights of Summer 2023
I entered the season without a plan. I have a huge amount of old seeds, some 12 years old. It is true that some seeds can germinate after centuries, but this is not a characteristic of domesticated plants. It varies by plant, but in general you want to use seeds within 3 years, since the germination rate decreases each year. For instance, I never see 3-year old carrot seeds germinate; chili seeds can germinate out to about 5 years; and beans and squash can go out about 10 years.
I planted a lot of old seeds and planned to work with whatever I got. I didn’t end up with much variety, but I was happy with what I got, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, luffa squash, butternut squash, and winter melon.
Cucumbers: Despite the name, lemon cucumbers taste like cucumbers, although somewhat sweeter. These lemon cucumbers were very prolific making up about 90% of my cucumber yield. With so many cucumbers to took up pickling. Note, lemon cucumbers make disappointing pickles, since they have a tougher rind are not as firm as traditional cucumbers. The inners turn to mush and you end up with pickled rinds.
Butternut Squash: The only type of winter squash I’ve ever tried growing was Delicata, and that was bust. I was absolutely delighted with with my success with butternut. I had 5 plants and harvested about 30 squash. I knew that winter squash required some type of curing step to help preserve them for many months of storage. Since I had no experience with harvesting winter squash I needed to research this. I ended up storing all the squash in a warm place for 2 weeks (a cabinet above the refrigerator), then I stored them in the basement.
Luffa Squash: I failed to take a picture of our luffa yield because the fruits took an extraordinarily long time to ripen. We let them continue to ripen on the vine right up to the evening we were convinced we were going to get frost. We were cold, it was raining and dark, and eager for super. The luffas were harvested and placed in the basement so they could slowly dry. Its been months and the larger luffa are still drying – maybe they’ll be dry by Spring?
A note of caution, our luffa vines climber a fence and hopped over to bushes in our neighbors yard before we realized. Luffas are very viney. The fruit are not terrible large, but still, the weight of the fruits snapped some branches on our neighbors bushes. They didn’t care, but I made sure to lavish them with cucumbers and butternut squash.
Winter Mellon: I bought these seeds special from a vendor in China many years ago after seeing the plant for the first time. WOW. I had tried germinating these in previous years but had no success. This year I got 4 plants. Not knowing what I was in for I placed each plant in different conditions, hoping for at least one to yield fruit. All the plants yielded fruit, but to varying degrees of success. I got a pretty good idea of what makes these plants happy – lots of sun, water, and fish emulsion – who knew? The images speak for themselves.
I harvested 7 of these monsters! The heaviest was 24.5 lbs.
Now, what to do with them. Winter melon are closely related to cucumber, but I read that the fruit should not be eaten raw. I haven’t been able to find any reason for this, but for the most part I’ve followed this warning. I’ve eat small amounts raw and observed no negative symptoms. I’ve been adding the fruit cubed into soups, stir fries, other vegetable, dog food…pretty much everything. The melons have a very mild flavor which is easily overpowered. I think of it was a vegetable filler, as in, add winter melon to any other vegetable and you have “more veg”. Winter melons preserve very well. I figure I harvested about 90-100 lbs of fruit and have stored the melons in my basement. Once cut. I store them in my fridge, but they take up a lot of room. I experimented with pickling winter melon and they are perfect. The melon pickles have a good firmness, take on the seasoning flavors readily, can be easily cut to uniform sizes to fit any size jar, and due to the uniform size, they are are packed like sardines so there are minimal brine pockets.
Mad Walshs 