Scaling down on everything as I need to get back to more usual “work”, I’ve nonetheless maintained my surfaces, but simplified everything : concentrating on moschata squash and watermelon, plus continuing some work on melon + a “last chance trial” on maxima. Gone of those main plots are all solanaceaes notably, and all interplantings of last year with smaller cucurbits as well…
MOSCHATA SQUASH
“ELITE” PLOTS
What’s interesting is that I’ve replanted seeds of my very very best plants of 2025 side by side in separated rows, so I can screen what’s happening in the filial generation - and possibly self some of those. “Very best” or “elite” of 2025 meaning here both high yielding, excellent growth and health indicators AT HARVEST, plus excellent keeping capacities and of course excellent taste. Those which managed to do all that in my sxxxxy soil. Heroes… So about 10 plants of the more than 300 of last year, so less than 3%… Hopefully these are the “magical ones” we’re all longing for, and that I would have certainly missed if I didn’t do proper work last year…
OTHER “COOL PLANTS” PLOT
I got a second category of “cool plants” which I did sow in a friend of mine’s plot, kilometers away - an even poorer soil than mine, but of the exact same type -. When I say “cool plants”, it’s in the sense that these were both excellent keepers and very good tasting, but with lower yields and health indicators at harvest : notably plants collapsing under diseases, so with less potential… probably!
It’s their last chance to show what they got, to show higher potential in this filial generation, and if some outcompete others clearly, I’ll bring seeds of those in the “elite” plot next year. Maximum 20% of last year’s harvest.
CONTROL GROUPS :
In both fields I installed “control groups” of 5 moschata varieties and F1s of the seed industry used by organic growers of my region, sown in exact same conditions as mine. That aims at showing objectively after 5 years of efforts the nature of my “adaptation” gains… That should be obvious in my highly selective ground. In other words : I hope to see a very positive difference between my plants and theirs which have been bred for the usual market gardening combo of drip irrigation, plastic tarp, inputs, foliars, and have been reproduced in those “very special” conditions over years if not decades…
In my other “cool plants plot” I’ve on top of these also sown 2 rows of the 2 craziest “elite plants” of 2025 : those 2 that were showing the highest health indicators at harvest (super long vines with strong rerooting, high yields, vine tips still growing, etc.). Those rows will be used to first assess the capacities of these “cool plants” nearby, in comparison, and then also assess the level of transferability of these “capacities” to the filial generation.
DIRECT SOWING TIMINGS OF ALL CUCURBITS
I wanted to direct sow everything around 15th of April and ended up sowing from the 28th of April to the 1st of May, 80% with cover crops, melons and watermelons mostly with a tarp - same tarps and places as last year. Sown much earlier than any one would do in there, for different reasons previously outlined (see my 2025 thread).
Side notes:
I also have the Sugar Baby variety as -too- simple “control group” in my watermelon patch. Again : sown in same exact conditions as mine, I use it as a proxy to measure the reality and magnitude of my “adaptation” gains over years.
I was going into what seemed to be a breeding dead end on maxima, and so I just kept seeds of my 2 very best fruits (really inferior compared to my best moschatas) and decided to trial in parallel about 20 varieties said tobe vigorous* on harsh ground, with good eating qualities. Last chance for maximas.
I’ll heavily select melon on the full slip type criteria at harvest : as my initial grex was “wide…so wide!” in this gigantic genus (much much more diverse than watermelon), I ended harvesting with difficulty last year… With poor eating quality overall, like in 2024, and no “champions” showing up. Major disappointment. In fact I’ve enthusiastically crossed all the sweet types (all of the 8 or 9 sub categories, coming from everywhere)… with no regard to this harvesting criteria! Then I understood the importance of this sole harvest criteria, and so to say of timings : this conditions the whole consistency of the "taste selection*, particularly in melons : my mixing of all “good” and “excellent” melons of all types types in past years, and in particular 2024 when I started to consciously select for taste after the 2022-2023 grex stage, ended up in a big mess. So I decided selecting only full-slip type melons at mid harvest last year, so around mid August, will continue in 2026, and 2027 should tell if this has any leverage : either it will be another dead end, or the gathered diversity over the years by crossings, will reveal potential eventually… The good thing and the reason why I’m chosing the full-slip criteria is that not only this criteria is very distinctive, but it also seems to be the majority of the early types. Only drawback I know of being that those have short shelf life : to be eaten within 2 to 3 days great maximum. We shall see…
I eventually decided to water by hand after conjugation of huge heat wave (around daily 40°C / 105°F) and drought in June, following a March-June drought. I can see the response to that 1liter/plant/week as crazy, harvest will be huge.
Did you look if there was clearly visible female flowers? I wonder how much male flowering is affected by the conditions. Last year I had some plants with female flowers at that stage or little after, but no male flowers. I don’t think I had any male flowers at that stage, so is conditions pushing the male flowering forward or is it something consistent. Would be helpful to make a note and compare next year if the offspring also tend to open male flowers earlier.
No I haven’t look into it Jesse.
Seems like this initial male flowering is showing up on both robust/big plants and weak/dying plants, and nothing in between.
I would expect it on weak plants, but it’s another matter if the strong plants are affected also by conditions or if it could be genetic. It’s interesting that middling plants don’t have the same. Might be that they aren’t as strongly affected to have full stress flowering, but at the same time aren’t far enough to have more natural possibly little conditions affected flowering. Overall early male flowering in robust plants does seem like it only has benefits so it could be one selection criterion in the future.
For robust plants I see this not as “being affected by conditions” but simply “ready for flowering”. A somehow normal transition from vegetative to generative stage. So middling should follow shortly, weak giving what they can (pollen) before collapsing.
Yes, it just makes me wonder because last year I didn’t have any robust plant making male flowers at that stage. Before I have had all/next to all male flowering stop in moschatas and maximas during cold rainy period, but females forming slowly so maybe it’s just negative correlation to conditions rather than flowering induced by conditions. Do you also have robust plants with no male flowers and how common those early male flowering plants are among robust plants?
Full slip for melons means that the peduncle detaches from the fruit when you push it with moderate pressure. Coming from a wide wide grex in the super diverse cucumis melo genus I now select for that trait first, then taste.
Knowing our harvest criteria in melon is super important for the whole selection consistency, because in that genus many different harvest criterias coexist with many different melon subtypes. After having crossed a maximum diversity I found out that to make any progress in selection I needed to be consistent on the harvest criteria. Full slip showed up as the most obvious. Yes it means I before tasting eliminate 60-80% of the harvest… Meaning for example that peduncle never slips… consequently I don’t save seeds from them. But it’s also those whose maturity is hard for me to evaluate. Additionally full slip melons tend to be by far the earliest here, so it’s kind of a win-win scenario: not only I can imagine making progress in selection (i.e. selecting for taste, + of possible yield and overall vigour) but it should give my population an earliness characteristic!
Before that I lost 2 years (2024-2025) trying to “select” post the 2022-2023 wide wide grex… It’s been just a mess, with something like 80% of the 2025 melons (200kilos or so) very very unsatisfactory tastewise, and additionally with no sign of betterment or adaptation of the so-called “selection” over years… At best!
Note that @Joseph_Lofthouse did a Cantaloupe grex, so a one type of melon grex, which makes it easier to select, easier to harvest too. If I was to restart a grex I would do the same : restrict to one or combine maximum 2 types, not all of them like in 2022 (about 8 types), to make sure that after that it’s not crazily hard to select. I hope that now that I have one restrictive but obvious harvest criteria I will make fast progresses.
Watermelon is a much easier genus as there is no multiple subtypes, genetic is narrower compared to melon : a good watermelon harvester can harvest whatever variety he wants without loads of failures, i.e. harvest criterias are always the same. So working with a watermelon grex is much easier.
Took me years to get this.
August 2nd, first melon harvest in the plain field plot, nearly 50 melons and 30 kilos… Some have over ripened during a 10 days absence. Others still in the field have signs of ripening (to over ripening…) but peduncle don’t slip at all, so they are discarded.
August 3rd watermelon harvest. After 10 days away from the field. Harvest based upon the dryness of the opposite tendril as shown on picture (see where the finger points to). 50 watermelons for about 100 kilos
Overall, and after 5 years of landracing, I see no clearcut differences between plants originating from my seeds and plants originating from the industry. That in my very marginal soil, with minimal irrigation.
To assess adaptation, this year I included control groups of varieties from the industry, used by neighbouring market gardeners, in the moschata, maxima and watermelon patches, so to assess visually those “gains” in selection, a.k.a. signs of adaptation, so to say the expected better plants, healthier, bigger, more… “adapted”.
Nothing showed up clearly, which is very disappointing. But I’ll have a better overview at the end of the season, so about 15th of October max.
Speaking about that to a friend she said that my seeds doing as well as seeds from the industry is in itself very good. Maybe she is right… What’s making me doubting this is my soil being so marginal. Anyway we’ll see at the end of the season.
I use same processes for many vegetables, and in some cases it works wonders (chilies, cucumbers), in other cases not at all (corn, favas). BUT, the climate and the weather is getting worse each year, heat waves are extreme, rainfall is insufficient, storms are fierce. This affects my growies more than anything else. I think your friend is right that it is great when your own seeds match those commercial seeds, especially if they perform as well as commercial F1 hybrids.
So you only have had control group this year? Might be just that this year wasn’t that difficult for said species and/or there hasn’t been adaption to the soil type yet. Depending what kinda soil you have, it might be hard to better plants, but rather better the soil itself. Those species like quite a lot of heat so maybe there can be differences on years that are cooller and/or wetter. I know from experience that quite a many “standard” varieties of moschata died early in the season because of the cold. Same with melons and watermelons. Granted, there aren’t go to varieties that are grown here. Or there are some moschatas and watermelons, but only to be grown in greenhouses or with cloth. Compared to those mine are better, but I can’t say if mine have improved against the original varieties. I would expect the journey to be long and hard. It all depends on what you are adapting to and if the traits already exist. It might be just about luck; getting the right 2 genes to interact and you get sudden jump.
I would say my progress probably is mostly just having the right varieties with already existing traits. Clearest difference is with wild crosses. In direct sown tomatoes this year half wilds were considerably faster, but 2024 with hotter summer the difference was negligible. I have been thinking of getting wild moschata, maxima and watermelons. Already have some wild melon seeds for next year. It’s quite easy to get at least feral watermelon seeds, not sure about the other 2. Obvious problem is the inedible flesh and isolating them until cross is staple in taste. Although I expect that I need to grow them under cloth anyway to make sure it’s warm enough so it’s not such a big problem.
Control group vs my “breeding lines” - not “only control groups”.
was the harshest season in 5 years with early deadly heat waves : 40degC+ couple times from beginning of June to mid July on a dry sandy soil with zero water retention, 50mm of rain in 3 months. Fortunately I did early sowings (end of April) when there was just enough humidity for the seeds to sprout, even if partially. No cucurbita could fruit under those conditions : they are just starting now (8th of August) when I was expecting them to fruit around 1st of July if we have had a cooler rainier spring. Watermelon and melon were helped by irrigation - but the Sugar Baby control variety (just 1, which is indeed not very significant) is doing as good as mine.
if “there hasn’t been adaptation to the soil type” after 5 years… it would mean to me that I would have been working under an absolutely invalid paradigma, meaning lack of understanding and appropriate technicalities.
So my personal take aways are that :
possibly extreme weather creates too much noise to see anything this year
and even if so, or if not, yes possibly unstable breeding lines doing “as good as” industry varieties (health, growth, etc.) could be in itself satisfactory, because after all… these are mine!
Investigations to be continued at harvest… And taste tests later on…
Well, if you look at successfull market gardeners, like Charles Dowding for instance, they have tested numerous varieties, both heirloom and commercial F1, and their own seeds as well. And results vary not only between vegetables, but between seasons. For a couple of years one variety is a winner, but then comes a new F1 that outperforms all previous. A couple years later a new F1 beats previous winner. But in case of some veggies, no F1 is better than old proven heirloom or own seeds. So if your own seeds do as well as products of a multi million dollars industry, I would not complain.
So about 10 plants of the more than 300 of last year, so less than 3%… Hopefully these are the “magical ones” we’re all longing for, and that I would have certainly missed if I didn’t do proper work last year…
