Melons as Cucumbers? Plus: Apricots! and a Garden Update

MELONS AS CUCUMBERS
For me, part of the fun of gardening is doing a little experimentation.  Last year, I tried hybridizing a new melon variety:  Bidwell Casaba x Small Persian, to see if I would come up with anything close to a Crenshaw melon (the Crenshaw is reported to be derived from a Casaba and a Persian melon).  Maybe we'll see this summer.  Plants are in the ground along with some of our favorite melon varieties and a couple of new ones.

This year, I lost some of my cucumber seedlings to damping off fungus.  So on the cucumber trellis, I'm trying some melons which I plan to try harvesting as cucumbers. "Armenian Cucumbers" and related varieties like "Painted Serpent Cucumbers" are actually melons, after all. True cucumbers have a hard time producing palatable, non-bitter fruit here because of the heat and because it is hard to maintain an even water level in the soil. The variety Summer Dance is the best I've found so far here, and it must be grown vertically or in part shade in this climate. This year, I'm also giving a few other varieties a spot in the garden, in addition to the "melon as cuke" experiment. I'm not including Armenian, because of the folk tradition that growing it near regular melons will change their taste. Not sure it's true.  But why let this idea interfere with my experiment?

 One year, our late, great dog Sparky was trying to harvest a melon (Piel de Sapo type) and accidentally pulled up the whole plant.  He loved Summer Dance cucumbers, so I figured he mistook the melon for a cucumber.  We used some of the immature melons he pulled up with the plant like cucumbers (peeled and seeded).  They were sweeter than cucumbers, but quite similar. Our neighbor at the time told me that in the old days, his family ate immature honeydews as cucumbers. Yesterday, I planted out six varieties of melons on the cucumber trellis, along with a late planting of  "Summer Dance" cucumber and  "Poona Kheera (a brown-skinned cucumber from India). The melons are:

Honeydew Gold Rind: A honeydew melon which turns golden when ripe. Not too sweet, according to the description. From Willhite, 2005 seed. Pick on full slip if using as a melon.

Sprite: A crispy little white Asian melon. Tiny seeds from 1998 AND 2001. We'll see if they germinate.

Bartlett Hybrid honeydew from Burpee. 2007 seed. They've discontinued this one, which is why I got it on their bargain page in 2007. Supposed to taste like a Bartlett pear.

Lambkin: an early Piel de Sapo type hybrid with yellower skin. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a winter storage melon here if it matures early, so why not use as a cucumber?

Golden Crispy hybrid: another discontinued hybrid, not too different from this one. Crisp little melons are popular in Asia.

Gold Bar hybrid: Park bills this as the first cucumber/melon cross: a cross of Cucumis sativas (a cucumber) and Cucumis hystrix (a melon). But information I see on C. hystrix calls it the closest cousin to the cucumber. It's not a regular melon. It's hard to cross a cucumber with the melons we are familiar with. Even this cross-species "melon" has been hard for me to grown. Last chance for this batch of seeds.

Update: June 8, Lambkin and Summer Dance sprouted in their little seed protectors, which have now been removed Pictures of those later.

APRICOTS: We got our first apricot on June 2, a Royalty (not Royal). Second one yesterday.  Quality is much better than usual, probably due to the cooler weather this year. Not as mushy this year.  Maybe it's gotten less water during ripening than usual, too.  This is a really big apricot, and the fruits stayed on the tree in our recent windstorms (it's billed as a wind-resistant variety). I'm thinking that this is a good variety for the Salinas Valley.  It's a semi-freestone and there are other varieties out there which taste better.  But it's still an apricot.

Update:  On June 7, I picked our first Blenheim apricots which matured in reasonable weather.  No comparison with Royalty.  Blenheim's depth of flavor was remarkable, and its texture is far superior.  No wonder people go on orchard tours in the Santa Rosa Valley to taste it.  The variety Golden Sweet is said by Andy Mariani to be very similar, but more resistant to pitburn and brown rot.  I just have to convince a nursery to pick some up from the commercial vendor.  There should be some super-sweet varieties coming onto the nursery market soon, too.

I also picked a Harcot on June 8.  It was bigger than Blenheim, but not as big as Royalty.  Quality is much better than Royalty, not as good as Blenheim.  It's better suited to our climate, though.  Flavor Delight Aprium also has some ripe fruits.  Usually they ripen before or with Royalty.  They rank just under Harcot for flavor.  They're quite reliable here.

FRUIT TREES:  I finally got around to whitewashing the trunks of the new Pluot trees yesterday:  a Flavor King to replace the one Sparky's bathtub killed, a Flavor Grenade to replace the one Little Buddy chewed up when he was a puppy, and a Splash.  You're supposed to use a cheap white latex interior paint, diluted with an equal part of water.  I found a little jar of paint used for testing mixed paint colors which was perfect for this use.  I also renewed the whitewash on the cherry trees.

ONIONS AND LETTUCE: F. planted a bunch of seed for a short-day purple onion this spring, and they're bolting, so I advised him to dig them up. It's hard for him to understand that you plant some kinds of onions in spring and other kinds in fall. But he buries all onions so deep that they won't bulb up, anyway. These are woody, but he harvested and bunched them like scallions, anyway. Tied them with an onion stem.  He hates to waste food. We give him some space in the garden to grow the things he likes. He does better with tomatoes and winter squash than with onions. He also transplanted some lettuce a couple of weeks ago which was already too bitter to eat after a warm spell. He really hates waste, and I think he intended to grow it out for seed.  More seed than we could ever use. It's a pretty, but inferior, variety - a volunteer with tough, frilly leaves. I pulled them and put them in the compost bin so he wouldn't have to. There are still some in the front yard. He had started to transplant those to his garden plot, too. But I stopped him. Think I'll try to keep them from going to seed after they bloom. We have lots of lettuce seeds.

TOMATOES: I saw my first sphinx moth of the year last night. It's a shame that these fascinating moths lay eggs which turn into such destructive caterpillars. It will be time to break out the Bt spray (one of the most effective, specific biological insect controls around) soon, as the moths begin to lay eggs on the tomatoes. You can see the difference between a tobacco hornworm and a tomato hornworm if you scroll down here. I think the tobacco hornworm is more common in our garden. I only saw one of them on the tomatoes last year. Only sprayed Bt once. We also get the white-lined sphinx moth here. It's a beauty. According to Wikipedia, the caterpillars feed on tomatoes as well as a wide range of other plants. I'm not sure I've ever seen one on a tomato plant, though. Other sources don't seem to list tomato as a host. This is the green color variation of the caterpillar. Uncle Kent told us years ago about having to drive over a migration of green caterpillars in the Arizona desert. Guess it might have been these.

Our first tomato will be ripe soon. It's turning red. It's on an Early Girl plant we bought at a promotion at Home Depot in a gallon pot for about a dollar. The Ace we bought at the same time has good-sized fruit on it, too. I shaded the exposed ones yesterday with aluminum foil. Many of the other tomatoes bought as smaller plants also have fruit.

It's the fourth of June, and this is a late year for tomatoes here, but the fourth of June seems pretty early for a ripe tomato to people in most of the country.  The name of the Fourth of July tomato doesn't mean as much in areas like this as it does in the North, and it's not offered in nurseries here. I didn't grow it this year because I didn't start plants from seed. Tough skin, but does well in the heat here, becoming very sweet. But I may be planting Moravsky Div (Wonder of Moravia) as my really early tomato next year. Recommended by heirloom tomato expert Carolyn Male. Along with Bulgarian Triumph as a later, small, sweet tomato.

The lanky potato-leafed plant I bought as an Early Girl has largely recovered from its early sickly appearance and has some small fruits on it. Though the plant is not what you would call "lush" at this point. It's probably the maternal parent of Early Girl, which is reported to be a potato-leafed cultivar. There were lots of potato-leafed plants among the Early Girls at nurseries and box stores this year. Somebody left some self-pollenized tomatoes on the plant during production of the hybrid seeds, apparently. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often.

Cucumbers, Climbing Squash Plants, Fruit Tree Pests

Below is a photo of the cucumbers I picked yesterday, with some of the tomatoes we picked at the same time.  We got some LONG cucumbers.  At the bottom are two Natsuhikari - our first of the season.  Then a ribbed Suhyo TK, then the tomatoes, then several Summer Dance cucumbers - not all as perfect as they usually are.

We've had a spider mite invasion of several of our stone fruit trees.  Today I sprayed the Heavenly White Nectarine tree pictured below with a jet of water.  Much to the consternation of our dog, Maggie.  The tree is due for some extra pruning this summer.  It's currently losing a few leaves due to the mites.  Hope rinsing off the leaves gives predators of the mites a chance.  They're very difficult to control with insecticides.   You can see one of F's winter squash plants climbing the tree.  He planted several of them where they would tend to overtake our plants.

Below is our drenched Warrior Princess Maggie resting after her epic battle with the water hose.

Oxhearts and Others - More Tomatoes

We're starting to get substantial numbers of tomatoes now.  Lots of Fourth of July, Early Challenge and First Lady fruits.  We've had several Cosmonaut Volkov fruits and some tomatoes which are labeled "Aunt Ginny's Purple", from a second plant which may have been a victim of the "toddler label mix-up" event. They're a tender, meaty heirloom type, but not "purple" or pink.   Lots of perfect-looking, egg-shaped Barbara fruits, too.   We hit the jackpot with several Pink Oxheart fruits today.  One is pictured below with several other varieties:

At 12 o'clock is our first little Royal Hillbilly.  The fruit of this variety is usually larger, according to the description.  Next to it going clockwise is a small Momotaro, a pink market tomato from Japan.  Then a Marianna's Peace, looking more like an oxheart than it should.  Then our first Goose Creek, a little bit over-ripe, with cracks at the stem end.  You can't see the little white speckles which are sometimes noted on this variety in the photo, but they're there.  Next to Goose Creek are three dusky Nyagous, slightly darker in hue than the big, boat-shaped JD's Special-C Tex   in the center of the platter. The green on the shoulders is characteristic of many of the "purple" or  "black" tomatoes when ripe.  Two of the Nyagous fruits are likely over-ripe.

At six o'clock are two Moskvich fruits, then one of the Oxheart Pink fruits.  The ones I picked today were variable is size and shape.  Not all of them looked this much like a heart.  The comes a Ponderosa Pink with some green on the shoulder and a little cracking, and finally a big double heart - Anna Russian.  There was also a HUGE double Anna Maria's heart that got stuck in the fencing where two layers overlapped.  The second time for this variety.  We'll have to find a better one to photograph.

We're still getting a lot of squash, too.  And a lot of squash bugs.  I had to pull up two plants of Saffron Prolific crookneck this week due to disease.  Zucchini plants generally last longer than crooknecks and straightnecks in our yard.  And some of F's volunteers.   Our 107 degree day was hard on the beans.  Haven't had any edible ones since.  Still getting a few Summer Dance cucumbers.

First Cucumbers, More Tomatoes

We are starting to get temperatures in the mid-nineties now with 102 forecast for Sunday. Usually this time of year, we ahve had several triple-digit days. The wonderful Blenheim apricots which are now ripening don't have pit-burn this year. We were lucky with this variety this year.

Pictured below, our second cucumbers from the garden (we ate the Cool Breeze before taking a picture).  The ridged one in front is Suhyo TK.  The one in back is our standby, Summer Dance.  Also pictured are some new tomato varieties. Along the edge of the plate above the Summer Dance cucumber is Rosalita. To their left, a heavily-ridged, squat Aunt Ginny's Purple with blossom end rot on the bottom where you can't see it. Beneath are two Early Challenge fruits and between the cucumbers is a plum-shaped Barbara fruit which probably could have stayed on the vine another day. IDs continue below the photo.

Beneath the blossom end of the Suhyo TK cucumber is a little Fourth of July fruit and our largest fruit so far, other than Cosmonaut Volkov, First Lady II. Lined up against the cucumber are three Berkeley Tie-Dye fruits. You may not be able to see the stripes, but there is some faint striping. The smaller fruits in front are Yellow Submarine, Black Cherry and Pop-Ins.

The plate is next to one of F's squash plants. He seems to have planted them where they will overtake many of the plants we planted. He believes that any seed which naturally sprouts in the garden will produce better than a "foreign" seed. At one time, when people planted single varieties, this may have been true. But we get some strange squashes from the F2 generation, offspring of hybrids from the year before.

First Cucumbers

Cool Breeze: Short, stubby gherkin, probably a little larger than you would pick for sweet pickles. Light color. Very crispy, sweet. The plants are not happy where they are planted. Don't think I will get many more fruits. Produces before many other varieties, but is not a heroically heat-tolerant variety like Summer Dance.  It needs to be grown on a trellis here.

Suhyo TK: Deeply ridged. Did not peel. Trace of bitterness at stem end, astringent (not in a particularly  unpleasant way, tender). Would be a good variety for making cucumber facials.  Would probably have some bitterness in hotter weather.  This is a tough climate for cucumbers.

Summer Dance: As usual, sweet and tender even with the skin on. No bitterness. A great cucumber for our climate.

More Tomato varieties, following up on our first harvest

On June 18 I picked:

Cosmonaut Volkov: A good-sized tomato, tasty and mildly sweet with light red flesh. Peeled easily without blanching (so did a fully-ripe Fourth of July). Assuming that a certain toddler didn't switch the labels when we planted this section.

First impression of tomatoes picked June 22 and 23:

Pop-ins: Variable red pear or teardrop type, bigger than typical yellow pears. Juicy, pleasant.
Rosalita: Rosy grape tomato with tiny white dots. Sweet, nice fruit.
Yellow Submarine: Bigger than the typical yellow pear. Flavorful.
Black Cherry: Very flavorful. Gel around seeds is green, as expected. I liked the fruits with a touch of green on the shoulder best. Lots of "black" tomatoes are ripe when they still show some green. There was no cracking. This variety is known to crack in some conditions.

First Lady II: Hard to peel when raw, OK for an early tomato, kind of bland.
Early Challenge: Smaller than First Lady II, easier to peel, slightly tastier
Berkeley Tie-Dye: Not as much striping as I expected. Gel around seeds is tart, as expected. Soft flesh. Not as flavorful as I expected. Maybe too ripe?
Aunt Ginny's Purple: Not ripe - picked early because of blossom end rot.
Fourth of July: Fruit ripened in warmer weather is sweeter than the first fruit we got.  In my past experience, the flavor of this variety has stood out when the weather got hot.  Fruits are relatively hard to peel raw unless very ripe.  This is a shame, because the skins are tough.

Update, June 26

Stone Fruits: Yesterday, Marcela came by for some spricots. The little fruits from my volunteer tree are flavorful, sweet-tart and firm, sometimes a little tough or crunchy. Seems more and more like the offspring of a commercial variety. Golden Amber is big, very soft and flavorful. Softer and bigger than Blenheim. I'm not so sure that it's immune to pit burn, as described in catalogs, but it's a good late apricot.  We didn't get much of an extended harvest this year due to rain during the bloom season.

Today, I picked a peck or so of Blenheim apricots - luxurious this year with more moderate temperatures. Temperatures are warm enough - mid-nineties - to sweeten up the Arctic Star nectarines. The soft ones are really sugary now.

The Santa Rosa plums at the side of the house are ripening, before the few Flavor Supreme Pluots, which normally start ripening first.   Santa Rosas are a jolt of tangy flavor, -- too flavorful for some modern tastes.

Cucumbers and squash: I picked a bunch more Summer Dance cucumbers today - smaller than you would see them in the store. More luxury. Not much going on with the other varieties. Lots of squash on now. Magda is prolific. Diplomat and Kojac are both nice, standard green zucchinis. I pulled up a couple of F.'s volunteer plants which had turned yellow.

Tomatoes: More varieties ripe for the first time this year:

Boondocks Mystery: The mis-labeled Boondocks plant turns out to be a mid-sized clear yellow tomato. Somewhat tart. Plant is diaseased, may come out soon.

Brandy Boy Mystery: The second plant with a purchased plant of Brandy Boy turned out to be a big, mealy yellow pear-type tomato.

Beam's Yellow Pear: Tasty, but not as tasty as Yellow Submarine. Both are thicker at the neck than the common little bland, cute-as-a-bug yellow pear tomato.

Napa Grape:  Juicy for a grape tomato.  Nice flavor.

Jet Setter: Mid-sized, tasty, quite easy to peel without blanching. One was craced at the stem end, the other wasn't

Better Boy: Tasty as usual. A little softer that Jet Setter. I preferred its flavor today.

Moskvich: Picked an under-ripe one with blossom end rot. Ditto Cosmonaut Volkov, from my first plant. The one picked from the fence resembles it in appearance, so it was probably identified correctly.