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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 1, 2015 23:11:58 GMT -5
Burpee sells a variety that they call 'Bush Cantaloupe'. But the only photos I can find of bush cantaloupe plants are photos that I took! My muskmelons are typically selected for small fruit size (2 to 3 pounds) because that leads to earlier ripening. Quick maturity is important to me because of the shortness of the frost-free season. Someone in a warmer climate might try for a bush plant with large fruits, but that won't be a project that occurs in my garden. Here's more photos of bush cantaloupe: Bush plants in a row of normal plants: Closeup:
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 31, 2015 13:44:56 GMT -5
My melons definitely know how to get along with weeds! LOL. Can't wait to plant my carrot seeds next year. They are definitely moving in the direction of out-competing weeds. p.s. And keep a compost bucket handy when you taste the smooth skinned melon... Just in case you need to spit it out
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 31, 2015 11:30:03 GMT -5
One of mine from your early landrace is oblong with smooth skin and a soft "peach fuzz" you can feel but not see I am so sorry! For best results, pick it at the earliest possible moment... And hope that it doesn't rain too much before then.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 23:32:53 GMT -5
I guess this is where I say, "Oh, Duh."!
Some of the tomatoes from this year's frost tolerance test are currently producing ripe fruit. I planted them into the field on about April 23rd. (Normally I plant out tomatoes approximately June 5th.) I planted them into the field after they had already been culled by radiant cooling freezes, and two days of snow laying on them. Once in the field I paid attention to them and culled those that showed (the most) frost/cold damage.
The first to ripen fruit was an F3/F4 plant descended from SunGold. Since we suspect that SunGold is descended from Solanum habrochaites, and we know that S. habrochaites has quite a bit of cold tolerance, this is where I get to say, "Oh, Duh." I've already been saving a bunch of SunGold and SunSugar seeds to screen for interesting flower types next year. Now it looks like I aught to be growing them to screen for frost tolerance too!
There were two of the SunGold descended plants in this year's cold test that I didn't cull. One has about 1 ounce fruits, and the other about 0.4 ounce fruits. They weren't flowering when I checked on them yesterday. I am also growing 6 plants of this line in my production patch.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 19:21:27 GMT -5
I'm glad I planted the weird phenotypes together. A little more weirdness is manifesting... Pucker-leaved moschata: And what's up with the glossy leaves? Angular-margined moschata: Also with glossy leaves! How about this huge maxima plant? That aughta suppress some weeds!!!! It's 4 feet tall!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 14:23:29 GMT -5
meganp: Excellent suggestion. I haven't mown that area since I spilled the seeds. Volunteer rye grew on it, and I made a fire in about that area. I didn't find any garlic looking at the area a minute ago, but seedlings would have already went dormant for the summer. I suppose that if any grew that they will sprout this fall and grow while the grass isn't...
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 14:18:34 GMT -5
The particular manifestation of smooth-skinned melons that I had in my garden was associated with mealy-textured flesh. I don't like the grainy texture, so I stopped saving seeds from smooth skinned melons, even though they were earliest. Besides, flavor and flesh-color where bland. They are very susceptible to popping from rain or irrigation. All muskmelons are somewhat susceptible to moisture just before harvest, but the smooth skinned ones are particularly sensitive.
I really like canary melons... Way back, I was growing a grex of canary melons, casabas, honeydews, Armenian cucumbers, tiger melons, and etc.. But they did poorly for me and I didn't continue the project. Plus I contaminated the seed with a bitter gene picked up from a pocket melon. These days, I would continue a smooth-skinned project into the third generation before abandoning it...
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 0:46:34 GMT -5
Many of the plants from F1 hybrids of [South American Synthetic Composite X Astronomy Domine] are currently flowering and are around 8 feet tall.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 0:14:31 GMT -5
The excessive rain rotted the papery sheaths off almost all the garlic just harvested, but I was able to salvage cloves from everything. Oddly none of the purple varieties exhibited any purple--what's up with that? In most things I grow, the purple color develops only when there is adequate sunlight, so my best guess is that the excessive rain prevented adequate sunlight from triggering the formation of purple color.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 30, 2015 0:06:40 GMT -5
I have 4 garlic weed patches... These are places where I have grown garlic for the True Garlic Seed Project in the past, but I can't use them again cause that would make it hard to distinguish between weeds and what I'm growing on purpose... Today when I was weeding near one of them, I noticed beautiful garlic flowers. Well formed. Purple as can be. About 5 plants. The tiny bulbils had mostly fallen out by them selves. They weren't in any sort of row, just randomly arranged, but in the general vicinity where I planted the original GRIN bulbils. I'm hyped. They were gorgeously developed flowers. The bulbils falling out spontaneously resembles the phenotype of Z058.
I'm intending to take surveyors tape and a camera with me next time I go to the garden, so that I can document them and mark them.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 29, 2015 7:22:23 GMT -5
keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.): I haven't manually cross pollinated my daddy's version of Charleston Gray with anything else. There might be some of it's genes, or even pure plants running around in my landrace. This was my early seed crop in 2014. One of the fruits (on the right edge of the photo) looked like Charleston Gray.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 26, 2015 10:44:27 GMT -5
reed: Mmmm! Waiting eagerly for your wife to get home... I like the 'easy-slip' trait so much that I cull any plants that I find that don't have it.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 26, 2015 7:37:01 GMT -5
It seems to me, that muskmelons don't ripen much after picking. They just get softer and softer until they collapse.
By the time my melons turn yellow and slip from the vine the seeds are already fully matured. I started growing these in a new field last growing season. It turns out that in that field the most annoying predator is a small mammal that burrows into the fruits from a tunnel.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 25, 2015 21:07:50 GMT -5
I have two clues about when to pick my muskmelons: They turn yellow, and the stem separates from the fruit if it's jostled.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 23, 2015 19:34:08 GMT -5
verdeperto: Welcome. Seems like your climate is much warmer than mine. What do you love growing?
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