My old strain of fig-leaved gourd has a male flower bud that may open in a couple days. No flowers noticeable in the greenhouse strain. I forgot to look at the other GRIN variety today.
I am seeing the first hint of possible blossoms. How big will the blossoms be? Will the male blossoms come on first as with most other cucurbits?
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The large flowers look like average sized squash flowers.
My first frost arrives tomorrow morning.
PI-532341, which grew in an open field has flower buds about to open.
PI-438572 grew to the roof of the greenhouse, and down the other side. Tiny flower buds form now. I intend to heat it for a while…
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Do you think they’ll be able to handle the frost?
We’ve had light frosts down here in Provo for almost a month, but no hard freezes. Tonight will be our first hard freeze. I’ve protected my pepo squashes really well by building a hoop house around them, and I’ll see if they survive. My suspicion is probably not, but if they do, that would be great! Either way, I just kind of want to see if this can work.
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Temperature of 18 F (-8C) expected Saturday night. I yanked the plants up that grew in the field, and put them in a pot in the greenhouse. They didn’t stand a chance in the field. Rough to yank them up, but this way, some slight chance might exist for fruit formation.
I’ll heat the greenhouse for a while. The thermal mass of the huge plants really holds onto the daytime heat.
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Oh, that’s cool! Huge plants act as a thermal mass, too? 
I just got a greenhouse, and I’ve put water barrels filled with water in there, as thermal mass to keep it warmer. My eventual hope is to use it to keep not-quite-hardy-to-my-zone perennials alive through the winter, so I can put them in the ground and not have to use pots and take them inside. If having trees in a greenhouse will increase thermal mass just by their being large plants, that means the more I fill up the space with trees, the better it’ll work! 
I can grow some accessions this year in New York provided they are not day length sensitive.
Unfortunately, they did prove to be day-length sensitive. Mine didn’t even survive at all! That was likely the fault of the earwigs that ate almost all of my bean and cucurbit seedlings last year, though (sob!), not the seeds themselves.
We did this last year, and as far as I know, we aren’t planning to do it again this year, but if we do decide to, I’ll private message you and ask for your address there!
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