Mini Watermelons

A Solitary Bowl Gourd Fruit Harvest

The vine was doing pretty well after I added in the compost and the vermicompost fertilizer. There were many tiny fruits forming. My CGers were looking at them in anticipation of their harvest. However the rains that came almost everyday in the last two weeks dampened all hopes cos' I noticed the area where the vine was planted didn't drain out the water well. So the vine started to rot and the baby fruits also started to rot and the leaves turned browned. Only one fruit despite all odds managed to grow a good size.

Winter Melon Babies Sleeping In The Garden

We have three growing on the vines this very moment and they are huge and heavy. One of our CG helper decided to make three mini hammocks for them to lie down. Many people passing by the CG fence often gaze in awe at the 'babies'.

Melon Fence Harvest

I managed to get my first harvest from the fence a couple of days ago. About two xiang gua rotted away before I got to it but there are still a couple of the mini melons hanging there and turning a tinge of yellow. They are about the size of tennis balls .... some are slightly bigger though.

Had my first taste of the melons below. My first time eating such small melons. They were crunchy with a refresing taste but not as sweet as I would like them to be. Perhaps it could be due to the many afternoon rains that could have affected the sweetness during harvest time.

My fellow CGers are looking forward to eating them but I am afraid that they would be disappointed about the level of sweetness these melons have to offer.

Fruiting Melon Fence

The melon vines are growing and I've controlled the snail population by throwing snail pellets onto the soil. So now the leaves grow lush and the flowers are out.
I've got the baby melons you see below and the largest one was spotted by one of my CG volunteers. They have sharp eyes for fruiting vines :-)





Hopefully and very soon this will grow a little bigger and when it turns yellow .... it's time for harvest. This would be the first Xiang Gua in the CG.

Melon Fence

I have torn down the two planter stands to make this melon fence possible. I am growing melons from the seeds given to me by a kind forumer after reading his post about his melon fence.

The idea is to use the fence as a trellis to support the growing melons since this area has got quite a bit of the morning sun.

The seedlings below are the Xiang Gua melons and they produce a lovely oblong, yellow melon if I manage to grow them to fruitation.


See, the male flowers have been spotted. Now to wait patiently for the female flowers to appear.

Exciting times ahead .... if they survive the snail attack.



Here's the planter with the Taiwanese Mini Melon seedlings and the last three of my bowl gourd seedlings. The seedlings here had to battle the snails as I was less vigilant here. So maybe got to germinate seedlings again .... haiz!





My one and only Bowl Gourd seedling left.

Solo Black Beauty Melon

It's been a couple of months already and the solitary black beauty melon managed to survive till this stage of flowering. I have only one vine here and I don't know what are the chances of getting fruits. But I'm letting it grow to see what happens next :-)

Black Beauty Melon

I bought a black beauty melon to try. It's actually a smaller version of a watermelon which has black seeds inside the red juicy flesh. I had successful germination with the seeds and have planted about four in the CG. Two of them managed to survive the CG. Let's see how it grows.