Some updates on the mochatas. I sow most of the seeds coming from the swaps. I planted 312 seeds/transplants in the first sowing.
This is the better looking plant. All the other are very tiny, very stunted.
What is the cause of the yellow leaves?
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Some maxima, they are the ones that I sown first, and the smaller ones. I planted 312 seeds/transplants in the first sowing. They are the least growing ones. A lot of yellow leaves.
Lack of nitrogen magnésium or iron. Did you feed them? It doesn’t look terrible to me. Could be better. But it seems hot and dry.
No, only the potting soil from the transplants. Directly to the clay rocky soil. Last year some melons got two small shovels of compost, but this year I did not do it, I did not see any apreciable difference.
Looks like you have one of the hardest selections of everybody in Europe. So you have minimum watering and bad soil but scorching sun , salt and wind. Some horrible African insects?
It’s not getting enough nutrients likely due to conditions. Lack of water would be enough to do it. I have seen many times with cucurbits in the neighbouring plots when they don’t water enough during hot and dry. One summer squash plant might need 10l per day if it’s not otherwise adapted. Vining/semivining with roots from the leafnodes might be good trait to look for or it might show just in how well they grow.
If it’s the growing tips and the whole leaf it’s a shortage of sulfur or copper.
Old leaves only and the whole leaf is likely nitrogen. Old leaves only and interveinal probably potassium but could be magnesium.
Could you get a close-up of a yellow leaf?
Sorry for the poor quality. I can no longer find this chart online.
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I need to water every day 10 liters? Or better every other day 20 liters? It is necessary to let the soil dry before the next watering? What is your take on it?
You got watering numbers for other species?
Definitely. Can curcubita mochata got roots from the nodes? One of my best mochatas from last year got very big and I think it got roots from the nodes.
I think no top soil is the first one. Here everybody is tilling to get rid of weeds. Whenever I look at neighbors fields, they seem deserted, just plowed with no intention of planting. Only a couple solitary trees. I think they do it to avoid fires, every year there are a bunch of fires on the island. So much heat and a lot of dry and yellow plants. So my plot was tilled a various time a year before I get a hold of it.
Probably in this plot the quantity of rocks is another one. When I look at the photos the rocks stand out.
I am just in the middle of the island, so salt water from the sea should be minimum, but in general the water is on the top of the spectrum of hard water, containing a lot of calcium.
Scorching sun is a plus right? Long season included. I got a friend that only sow crops in the spring because it says that the summer heat is not good for planting. Maybe he does not like getting tan.
African insects? Now that you comment. My okra got a bunch of worms. But in general they are not a huge problem.
In this plot I got a bunch of protection from the wind. The other one is on a hill, so I got direct wind. It gets quite hard in winter without any protection.
I never watered my squash, they were fine. They looked thirsty and sad in the evening, but chirpy and fresh in the morning, Check how they are at sunrise. If you spoil them young you’ll be watering all the time. Yes to letting dry out, asking for trouble if you don’t and if i give plants water better a lot as it penetrates deep. I like to go one time to a plant give 2 liters slowly go to the next to water, and come back later so it creates like a sack under the plant forcing it’s roots down all the time.
That way you get best results for least water and effort.
That is just a rough estimate, but has worked well when my neighbor’s plants look like that. It could be divided however you like. Google can give you some estimates on other species. If the target is to get them do well with as little as possible, then as long as you get fruits with seeds it shouldn’t matter as much if you only want to do breeding. Some have to do badly for the cream to rise to the top. What you probably need is just to direct sow a shit load of seeds. Thousands, tens of thousands to have the best chance to find adaptions to what ever is bothering your plants. In my opinion it doesn’t matter that much why they are doing bad as long as it’s something that is natural in your place that you can’t counter easily.
Yes they do and I would think it’s a common trait in cucurbits (and even in plants in general). Last year I noticed some roots in watermelons as well. That would be a great trait in watermelons, but I think those roots came to a spot that was in a really wet spot which in turn isn’t very good for the stems. So first I need stems to better tolerate moisture and then to root.
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It looks like nitrogen deficiency to me. Maybe caused by not enough irrigation (or the soil is too compacted to absorb the water correctly), maybe the soil is really lacking organic matter. You can fix it for a good yield, or leave it for good trait selection.
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I also agree this is a deficiency in nutrients, mostly nitrogen, but could be deficiency in some minerals too (combined).
Probably due to a combination of hard compacted soils and low water availability.
I see similar thing with my cucurbits (and also other warm weather crops). At the moment of some 40 zucchini planted/seeded only one plant doesn’t show deficiency in nutrients. All others are really struggling or are already eaten by different critters. That one good plant is actually one of yours @Richard form serendipity train 
.
We have similar issues - while my local area has a bit more rain and some periods with a bit lower temps (not all the time!), and it looks like I have some more organic matter in the soil, I have really shallow soils (probably just some 40-50 cm above hard rock/ base rock in garden beds) which just can’t stand those periods without rain during hot summers - effect is just like you have at your fields.
The way I see it (you can disagree, of course) there are few options:
- leave it as is and you have great selection pressure, anything that survives to seeds is golden
- higher watering regime
- adding organic matter with a goal to have better structured soil over time that can hold more water for longer time.
And yes, one could play with those option and combine them in different ways. Ultimately it depends on your goals and available time, water and organic matter. Just a note here - living plants are the best at building soil structure…
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This year I got better water infrastructure so I can up my water regimen for the plants. In general the plants are doing more poorly than last year.
I was watering for 30min every day, but 14 hours later the clay soil was a bit moist. I did not want the root rot. So this week I change to every other day for 1 hour. The pressure is no that great so 1 hour is a bit deceiving.
I got 3 sections, each one of 400m of drip lines maybe 1400+ plants.
I usually water the plants at night time 1:00-4:00.
The water is very concentrated, near to the plants. Can be a problem. It is something like this.
Definitely the soil is one of the other major problems. Clay soil and a lot of rocks.
Amazing. Glad to hear that.
I found that the seedlings of the bigger seeds from round zucchinis are the first to come up. But the ones that first bear fruit were the other ones.
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Yes. I was thinking in the firsts years to reproduce the seeds, and then transition from transplants to mass direct sowing with those acquired seeds. But I am finding that for direct sowing I got like 0 Cucurbitaceae seeds for next season.
That’s the problem, you need seed increase to direct sow which creates a big loss of seeds. And then hope for one small survivor with seeds.
If you get zero then it’s a dead end so then you are back to seed increase.
Unless you move closer to the wild origins of the plant which is in South America. Villagers there and maybe indigenous folk must have seeds they grow on degenerated lands, Whereabouts the countries start resembling Mediteranean climate while going up north from the tropics i wouldn’t know exactly. Coastal Mexico or California.
Did you get those gigantic seeds from there? They sure looked primitive. Big is good for direct seeding the more energy to start the better.
I’m making a grex of pepo, totally different circumstances, if i find an easier way to get seeds out would help, Do you pop them on a pile to let rot and pick them out later? Or leave them on the plant?
You don’t need transplants to make seed increase, unless you have really a few seeds. If direct seeding seems like it’s less likely to make even plants then help them just enough to get started, but little enough to make some selection. Caring for hundreds of transplants is a lot of trouble and might end up in a failure because of that. Direct seeding you don’t need more than a few row meters and 10-20 row meters per species if you want more diversity. It’s a lot easier to care for and easier to use mulch or whatever. Then you can increase the area and reduce care while you increase seeds.