Sunday, September 25, 2022

Avocado seeds. Mexicola, Aravaipa, Long South Gate, Holiday

 This post documents the looks of avocado seeds from four cultivars. Left to right on every picture below: Mexicola, Aravaipa, Long South Gate, Holiday.



Thursday, September 22, 2022

Large Fruited Strawberry Guava

This post describes my strawberry guava tree fruits that can be pretty large, up to 20 g in weight. It seems the higher the fruits are on the tree, the larger they grow. The tree is by the Eastern wall of the house and only gets few hours of morning sun. The upper branches get a bit more sun than the lower ones. The fruits are very flavorful, sweet and complex.



 

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Afghan Green Melon



This post describes the large green melons from Afghanistan, a friend and I grew this summer. I could not associate this melon with any similar melon found on the web.  It is NOT Bateekh Samara melon offered by rareseeds, and it is NOT Kukcha, although it looks very similar to the later. Kukcha has hard flesh, but this Afghan melon has soft flesh. This melon is very sweet honeydew type fruit. 

This selection ripened for us in September and produced large to very large melons, 5-10 kg, or 10-20 lb.  Below are the pictures with a different fruits on the scales.

One of the larger fruits in kilograms (7.8 kg) and pounds (17 lb).

A half of another fruit in kilograms. This scale doesn’t take more than 5 kg, so I had to half the fruit. This half is over 3 kg.

And the smallest fruit collected so far. This scale managed to weight it whole, 5.7 kg.

The flesh is green, sweet, and melting. Excellent melon but probably requires long ripening period. These fruits ripened over the summer of 2022 in Woodland, California with many days over 100F. Planted by seed in late spring with the first fruits ready in early September.







Frost tolerance of Himalayan Mulberries

 The past winter of 2023-2024 was the second test for my Himalayan mulberries frost tolerance. I have five two-years old trees of four culti...