Well, it’s raining again, and from the forecast, looks like it’s going to continue for several days …again. There was a nice break in the weather yesterday, and I got to commune a little with the plants and see how they have been doing. Happily, there is some progress with the edibles:
Novice Gardener’s mulberry plant is starting to fruit again. I think it’s cute how it seems to have one fruit per leaf juncture! We will have to compete with the birds for the ripe fruits again, I think.
The Mighty Marrow is still growing on the vine. After some debate, I decided to leave it untouched, and to let my mum decide when to harvest the second one (yes, the flower I mentioned previously set fruit!). She was of the opinion that you should harvest it when the fruit is young and not too seedy – preferably when flower at the base of the fruit dries up and drops off. However, I was advised that in Thailand, they leave the fruits on the vine until the vine dies off, and that in the Philippines, they harvest the fruit when the “hairs” on the skin of the fruit drop off, so I was more inclined to wait. Mighty Marrow is now about 66cm long and the circumference of a person’s thigh at the widest part; Marrow II is already 55cm and tilting the other end of the trellis…
The latest angled loofah plants (from Grandpa Weed) have been having fun and games with me. Two weeks ago, they were sporting only male flowers; last week the girls were out in full force. Finally, this week, boys and girls got in sync, and there are a few fruits starting to grow. This pair of plants is growing in a large pot, just to see how they fare, because I find the previous ones rather short-lived and want to see if it’s the plants or where I’d grown the predecessors.
The latest winged bean plants have started budding. I grew them from some seeds that had been stored in the fridge for almost a year, and wasn’t sure if they would grow, because you know winged bean seeds lose their viability quite fast. Well, all the seeds germinated, and as you can see, the plants are doing well. Now I’m really convinced that storing seeds in the fridge really prolongs their lifespan – and we’re anticipating the harvest already…
After unsuccessfully trying to get my old (and not initially stored in the fridge) small bittergourd seeds to germinate, my friend Julie came to my rescue with seeds from her plant, and we finally have the first of hopefully several plants beginning to grow. We’ve missed having these growing here…
Unhappily, one of our burgundy okra plants that had been growing nice and tall is now two-thirds its original height. The rain must have made it too top-heavy, causing the stem to snap. We managed to salvage the two okras growing at the top and hope that the plant will grow side shoots instead of giving up. I am starting to look through our seeds to decide what to sow soon so we don’t have a fresh veggie drought in a month or two.
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