It was dry enough to mulch rest of the paths. Still muddy at spots, but should dry up fast with this weather and the way plants are growing. This week had rain forecast couple of days ago, but now those are all but gone from the maps and temp forecast went up 5C/9F with highs getting close to 30C/86F again. No cool weather in forecast, but might be getting to more seasonal temperatures by the end of this week. Or not. It has been pushed back already in few forecasts.
At least some of the moschata have very interesting and useful trait. They have first females just few leafnodes into the vine and 2 in a row with 3rd little further and 4th in second vine. Vine is also more compact so possibly little bushy growth. Another also has 2 females right close to the plant, but just more vining growth habbit. Usually the first females come much futher down the vine. They also look like they will open soon which probably is record early or close to it with direct sowing this way. I didn’t check if they even have males ready to open. Would be a new problem as usually they flower a week before first females. There is still some 2 weeks of good time to start developing fruits to have them ripe enough with high certainty so looks really good.
Interesting early moschatas! Just for you to see and then to let me know if you’re interested because I could ask friends for some to send you:
this trait you’ll see under is incredible:
In Nice region (south east France) they grow 2 kinds of “Longue de Nice”: the mostly known outside of Nice is a kind of basic, but super long, winter storage moschata… But the real local selection is all around this second type: around what they call “courgette”, i.e. “zucchini” in most places, but of a crazily surprising type, and use: they harvest the “courgette” BEFORE it flowers and sell them on the market, with the flower attached. I saw a fields last october where they were harvesting 80kgs daily on a 1000m2 plot.
How in the world? They just selected generation after generation around:
short internodes…
-… with female flower at each node or nearly, and frequently 2 (friends told me that they had already seen triple female flowers!). They even had to selection against that at some point as they were lacking male flowers to have some fruits pollinated for their annual selection!..
As it’s not been selected for storage and good taste when mature it may not be super interesting just the way it is but surely it could be an amazing trait to introvert - even partially - into a landrace for short seasons!
Yes it’s definetely interesting. Mature taste can’t be too bad no can it? Would be interesting to get some evaluation of that. The real question is how tolerant of cold they are? Do I need to be prepared to baby them to make a cross?
Those are quite big at flower stage so they must be quite big as mature fruits. That’s not as good a trait for me.
I could ask for taste of those “courgette type” they select for their next generation, will let you know. I can’t tell if they differ that much from others.
The reply to your question about cold tolerance of those may find an answer with @malterod in Denmark as I sent him some of those seeds. Nice is VERY hot, probably one of the hottest place in France, South Italy like or so.
Eventually: yes you are right that the “winter type” strain makes literally huge fruits: up to one meter, frequently cut on market gardeners stands for sellings. Nevertheless those “winter type” are selecting for having less fruits so I really can’t tell how such a “courgette” type would behave carying many fruits: I’m kind of sure they would be shortened a lot. Again Malte maybe could provide us some clues.
I’m growing some of your seed @ThomasPicard this year, but it is still too early to say how they will turn out. I’m crossing my fingers. Of the Cucurbits I grow, I expect them to be the hardest to grow because all the genetics come from southern types. I don’t know anyone growing these long-necked mochatas in more Northern climates. The mix I’m growing probably the most Northern seed is Centercut Squash, which Row 7 grows in New York State.
After having some varieties die/not do very well even with protection I’m a bit wary trying stable(ish) varieties. Although location might not always tell about it’s cold tolerance or the cold tolerance might actually be tolerance to other factors. Still more certain would be through cross with something more tolerant and unstable so that there are more changes to work.
Those might still be huge and only start to develop few fruits after pollination. What I also started to wonder is how long they take to grow those flowers to full size. I would expect growth to be fastest after pollination and so smaller flowers might be better to get that pollination early to get fast development. I only need something that has many females as soon as possible so those plants that I have might have all I need. Still those look interesting and might have some use.
First female flower in luffas, but no males yet. They look to be almost ready with several more females. This one wasn’t in the best transplants. They suffered heavily from transplant shock and conditions after that. If I use transplants next year I know now better how to time it. Might not need to use them thought. Direct seeded aren’t that much behind and with the plastic it’s possible to sow them earlier. They did suffer a bit similarly to transplants what looks like might have been caused by saturated ground and temperature variations from low to high. They did recover fast and best have grown 1,5m in the last 2 weeks since heatwave started and has reached the top of the trellis. Flowers are still small and might be late from ideal, but at least it’s interesting to see how they grow and how things might change once eventually temperatures drop.
Had the fist male flower in moschatas open only now. Not especially unusual timing as on “normal” plants the females are just starting to develop, but it feels like wasted time now when there has been so many fameles open. There was also one open in another of the best plants so I pollinated it and now I’ll have a super strain? There was also one smaller male flower on another plant, but that didn’t seem to have much pollen. What was interesting was that it was one of the plants that had early females and there males were first. It was just generally more slower. Maybe it has both traits or it might be as so often is the case that stress has caused early male flowering. Still it has early female flowers so it’s worth seeing what it might bring.
It seems like early female flowering is even more advantageous than i initially thought. On “normal” strong plants females seem to be around 2 weeks later than in the first early female flowering. With that trait growing moschatas in very short cool(ish) season might change from challenging to easy.
First female flower in maximas opened a couple of days ago and I promptly pollinated it with all of the other plants that had flowers. They are seeds from last years survivor plot. They seemed to be little slower than I thought, also compared to moschatas and I’m wondering if the seeds were affected by late ripening period and stressful conditions. The seedlings seemed a bit weaker, but once they got going it has looked normal. Growing out these for seed in more normal growing conditions should avoid that problem and have fully vigorous seeds next year.
Already thinking of something similar, but instead of making some early I plan to sow main patch without any protection to slow them down enough that a patch sown like this year (possibly with extended clothed period) has time to start flowering. I still want to favour hard selection pressure and there isn’t really need to get them set fruits any earlier than this.
