Looks like a banana canteloupe or Armenian cucumber?
Maarten
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Vegetative sprawl, and healthy looking fruit is so nice to observe. Hoping for an Armenian cucumber, but luffa has a distinctive odorā¦kinda bitter and pithy as an attempt to describe it.
My vote so far is Armenian cucumber. These experimental test grows are all for seed stock expansion so I will have to wait for any extras to try tasting.
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The large vegetative growth plant has started to grow the start of fruit. Ridged, so it looks like Luffa acutangula.
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Yes, looks like Armenian cucumber is the first plant to fruit with less vegetative sprawl than the Luffa acutangula. Both have made it to the grow again in greater numbers phase for next year. The others I will give another trial, this time in Spring of next year instead of a Summer planting as with this year to test how well they do then.
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The GTS Kale has had a mass die off with the recent triple digit heat. Initial growth was luxurious but now its a solid brown mat of once Kale plants.
I did get about 4 perhaps 5 kale plants that did not die to the ground and instead have thicker stems and dropped their leaves and have regrown a few green leaves with the recent cool down.
I will keep them in the ground as a test to see if they continue in multiyear growth and could be the start of a tree kale growth form that can survive through the heat provided they can now make it through the Winter season alive and grow again into the next Spring and Summer.
This could be the start of a self-selected genetic mix for my local conditions.
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It rained today and a hurricane is forming off the caribbean so we have had a rare shot of rain and cool temperatures. I had a wander outside, some updates.
The Armenian Cucumber had its first fruit, half formed full size, the other remained small. I harvested it last week and let it sit on the chair outside to start fermenting in preparation for seed harvesting. Those seeds are now harvested and in a jar of water, half the seeds were not formed fully and were floaters, which got discarded along with the pulp.
A second Armenian Cucumber is forming on the plant and it is swelling uniformly so no strange shape.
The Armenian Cucumber plant is yellowing and looks to be on its way out. It was only used for a test and seed generation so it was a success.
Now the ridge gourd / Chinese okra (Luffa acutangula) is another story. Its half up a fruit tree, all across the ground in a mass sprawl and I stopped counting after 23 fruits on the vine. The center of the vine is yellowing but I already have 1 or 2 large fully mature fruits and the remaining 21 fruits range from small cucumbers to something nearly large. The center of the plant is starting to yellow but the surrounding vines and leaves are still fully green and going for it. Extremely vigorous for me. I had not planned to use this plant for anything other than test and seed generation but Iāll have so many fruits I can sample some for food value. The young fruits are said to fill the same role as cucumber/zucchini like vegetables. Definitely a plant that will be higher on the priority list to grow in future if it continues to be this vigorous. Next will be a Spring grow test to see how it holds up to the pest pressures. I donāt think it would have had as good a grow if it was growing earlier this Spring when we had the early squash bug epidemic here.
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I have had a change to work that does not permit being home to work on the garden so the garden tasks have taken a major hit. I did find time to finally get the seed out of the pods for the geriatric āThere Can Only Be Oneā-Collard plant.
First was getting the pods off of the branches and separate out all the leaves and large sticks. Here is the very last batch that went into my bowl I used to hold the seeds.
After lots of hand picking out of chaff and larger rubbish I ended up with this overall from the geriatric collard for seed this year.
By this time I am getting rather dizzy from all the blowing out of the chaff. A few more hand picking of smaller stones or clay particles and I could finally put it in a small jam canning jar until needed.
If wanted I can send some to GTS if they are including collards in the mix. I still intend to bomb the garden next spring with lots of this seed to get a large batch of collards going to see if they pass on any traits to help resist insect pressure and to grow with zero watering inputs or sprays during the growing season and summer droughts here.
Other seeds collected with my severely limited time: Watermelon, appears to be moon and stars, the only watermelon that successfully grew to maturity from the Fukuokaās Everything Else Grab Bag. Armenian Cucumber. Chinese Okra/Angled Luff/Silk Squash (luffa acutangula). And Burmese Okra rescued from my last batch of seed that was mostly nonviable I now have the same size glass jam canning jar filled to the same level with Burmese Okra that grew with no watering, sprays and grew through the summer drought here in Texas.
The Kang Kong defiantly said it was not going to go to seed with all the hot weather even with lack of rain we had. But now its turned cold with 48F morning this morning and it only recently less than a month ago decided to flower with typical morning glory flowers in pure white. It has green seed pods but how long it takes for the seed to ripen has me worried with how quickly its turning cold.
There was one bush bean as the only other seed in the Fukuokaās Everything Else Grab Bag that actually grew in the summer planting but only 3 plants survived and werenāt prolific so I left the pods on the plants to dry down which they are starting to be at this time so I may harvest them soon.
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If you donāt know the taste of Collards and want a comparison against other greens you may have eaten, here is a video to help you narrow down the taste:
I like most all of those greens, cabbage is good too but to me personally, kale is bottom of the list. I also really like the spicy mustards and radishes. Iām not a huge fan of chard but with a bit of a nice hot mustard thrown in along with it and other seasonings, like he mentioned itās pretty darned good. Chard is also about the easiest thing for me to grow.
Somewhere there is a video about me making a new vegetable Iād called broccol-ish, where I mixed up all b oleracea I cound get ahold of the make a winter hardy plant that made lots of small broccoli - like sprouts in very early spring. It worked pretty well be we found we enjoy the leaves as greens over winter as much or more than the flower stalks in spring.
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Wow! Just read through everything. That was both entertaining and informative. Iām also in the south so Iād love to hear an update on how the tomatoes ended up doing for you? Thank you so much for detailing and sharing your journey this year!
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Tomatoes ended up growing great for me. They all grew for the most cherry tomato sized. The taste of these highly promiscuous tomatoes are not bad, but are not great. If I wanted some tomato type filler in a recipe I could use them. I might continue growing them to see if I can find any nicer flavors and select for those but overall they grew fine in my wood chip garden method here.
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