Happy Friday!
Don't squeeze too hard. They're as spiny as they look.
(Perfect for the dragon-themed kids garden I wrote about a while back!)
I picked these jelly melons on the green side because they'll keep ripening inside. Left outside...the squirrels might beat me to the punch.
Jelly melon (a.k.a. African horned cucumber or kiwano) is a vine. In the cucumber clan.
I think of cucumber as the family weakling. It gets beat up by a bunch of pests and diseases.
The jelly melon?
The family bully. Left to grow on the ground it elbows out neighbours. No hint of disease or pests here in my garden.
But it doesn't care for the cold. This is a heat-loving crop.
So if you're in a colder zone like me, don't expect buckets of jelly melon early in the season. For me, growing it without row covers, somewhere that just barely gets 6 hours of sun a day, this is a late-season novelty.
Elsewhere in the garden this week, I picked an armload of basil.
I used to dry basil. Now I pluck off the leaves and freeze them. Fast and easy, which fits my routine.
When making sauces through winter, I pull out a handful of the now-brittle basil leaf bits.
A few of you wrote to me about basil plants giving up the ghost mid-summer. Probably downy mildew. Next year, get seeds for a downy-mildew-resistant variety.
What’s new in your garden?
Steve
PS. First time I've grown Queen of Malinalco tomatillo. It's the long, yellow tomatillo in the picture. Fruity and sweet!
This year my tomatillos ended up in a tired-out corner of the garden. I've got enough for our annual salsa-making session, but I think next year I'll put a couple of plants in a sub-irrigated container. Like tomatoes and peppers, this is a crop that positively loves the warm soil in a container.
