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.

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.

 

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.

Holiday and Daily 11 avocados fruited in Davis

 This post describes my experience grafting Holiday and Daily 11 avocado cultivars onto my old (>20 years) Mexicola tree. Holiday was grafted in 2017 and Daily 11 was grafted in 2019. Holiday graft is a very weak grower. This year I grafted it onto a stronger branch of Mexicola to make sure that it has enough support from the stock tree. Daily 11 is a vigorous grower. Both cultivars fruited first time this year. Daily 11 made just one fruit, and Holiday produced four very large avocados. It seems that July is the month when they are ready here in Davis, CA. Daily 11 fruit is actually fell from the tree. I picked the first Holiday fruit on July 20, the same day the Daily 11 fruit fell. Here they are on the scales in the pictures below. Daily 11 is more elongated. 

Daily 11 ripened in 4 days, below pictures are from July 24 2022.

It has hard shell, the flesh can be scooped out as in the picture below 

I wouldn’t call this avocado taste excellent but it is good and has a lot of flesh as the seed was very small. Has a little amount of insignificant fibers.

This graft is making a good number of fruits that should be ready next July.

The Holiday fruit that I picked on July 20 got soft only on July 30. The fruit had perfect texture, very creamy, and gets a very good mark from me. It didn’t have any distinct flavors that could be found in some other cultivars. The shell is hard, the flesh can be easily scooped out. Beautiful fruit with no stings at all.

This small Holiday graft produced 4 large fruits this year.

 I only see one developing fruit that might be ready next July.

I don’t know why, but the seeds from both fruits Daily 11 (left in the image below) and Holiday are pink.

Round melons

 This post lists four cultivars of round melons harvested at the end of July 2022. Two of them have been grown by me, Kolkhoznitsa ( Collective Farm Woman) and Kampyr (Grandma, Кампыр, Бабушка). Two others, Golden Hami and Golden Honeydew have been grown by my farming neighbor Jim.

Left to right in the images below: Kolkhoznitsa, Golden Hami, Golden Honeydew and Kampyr. 

Kolkhoznitsa 

Very sweet, aromatic and complex in flavor, the flesh is medium density.

Golden Hami

Very sweet, the flesh is dense and crunchy. 

Golden Honeydew 

Sweet melting flesh. 

Kampyr 

Melting flesh but not much sugar yet. This wasn’t fully ripe fruit. I will retaste it in a few weeks.

The first three melons are excellent and early ripening. Kampyr should be harvested later. 

Mambo Hybrid and Royal Golden Watermelons

Both Mambo Hybrid and Royal Golden are excellent watermelons. Mambo Hybrid started ripening right after Mama's Girl water melon, and we already consumed around five fruits or so. Royal Golden seems to be a bit later ripening, we cut our first ripe fruit on July 18th. 

Mambo Hybrid fruits are medium in size and green striped. The flesh is very sweet, the seeds are black, and the rind is thick.  Excellent melon.

Royal Golden fruits vary in size and can be very large.  My first fruit was over 20 lbs. However, I see smaller fruits on the vines too. They are supposed to be yellow outside, red inside. However, my first fruit was not uniformly yellow on the outside.  Red and very sweet inside with large white seeds. The rind is very thick and hard. Excellent fruit. 

Watermelons on July 4th 2022

 This post is on the three cultivars of watermelons we tasted on July 4, 2022.  I grew Mama's Girl and Lemon Drop cultivars, and Jim-25 came from my farming neighbor,  Jim.  He is a breeder and produces hybrid seeds.

In the pictures below, the largest is Mama's Girl, the yellow is Lemon Drop, and the smaller green is Jim-25.

All these watermelons turned out to be very good to excellent.  Lemon Gold could take a few more days on the vine, but never the lees was pretty good and crisp.

Jim -25 was crisp and sweet, and the most flavorful and sweet was Mama's Girl.   In summary, I could eat any of these on any day.  All were happily consumed by the family and I.