Urban Farming for Food

Melons That Failed #OurFailures #CantaloupesThatFails Note: This post is purely based on growers' observations, your results may vary. No part of this can be reused without written permission from the blog writer. Note: No part of this document, be it pictures or content can be reproduced/reused without written permission from this blog owner. # 洋香瓜 #LongGreenMuskMelon #RoundOrangeMuskMelon As mentioned in our About Sweet Melons post, we started our journey of growing sweet melons/cantaloupes back in 2012, about 10 years ago. Then, our green house conditions are non ideal for sweet melon growing, low roof, hot and humid.    Hence, we only managed to grow one cultivar consistently well, Taiwan cantaloupe (洋香瓜), "Known You" seeds. Almost all Japanese melon cultivars perished in our hands. This round, however, we failed terribly with our previous champion cultivar, Taiwan cantaloupe. Even the seedlings sprouted unhealthily.  The seeds are kind of old ( 4 years)...

Observations #WeLoveThis #PrettySweetCrunchy Note: This post is purely based on growers' observations, your results may vary. No part of this can be reused without written permission from the blog writer. Comparing to the Japanese and French cultivars, this Thai Golden Queen Melon has pretty bushy vines and they don't seem to be very particular on pruning. As long as the vines are well ventilated, they seem to be ok with it.  We are new to this cultivar, hence really do not know how best to handle it. We pruned it just like the Japanese melon since the literature is more readily available. We managed to get one good size, great tasting fruit per vine but we feel they may not need to go by the one fruit, one vine principle. This has been shortlisted to go on second round and some adjustments will be done. Will add on once round 2 has concluded.   Journey Of Growth #Seedings #InitialGrowing #Cisbay #AGNLite #ChaiTaiSeeds We used Golden Queen melon seeds from Chai Tai Thaila...

Observations #PrettyGirlButNotSweet #ServeUsRight #BewareOfExpiredSeeds Note: This post is purely based on growers' observations, your results may vary. No part of this can be reused without written permission from the blog writer. First and foremost, the stronger plant of this cultivar grows fastest among the batch. 50% of the seedlings have very healthy vines while the other 50% look kind of sick.  Unlike the Japanese Sunrise Melon which has very similar behaviour and outcome for all plants, this cultivar has seedlings which are pole apart, either very good or very bad. We have grown sub variants of this cultivar (Anna's Charentais)  previously with very good results. We suspect this weird behaviour is probably contributed by us using near expired seeds. Will have to acquire new seeds and give it a go again. Journey Of Growth #Seedings #InitialGrowing #Cisbay #AGNLite #GartenlandSeeds We used Gartenland seeds from eastern Europe gifted by a friend. The seeds germination...

Background #CommonAmongAll Note: This post is purely based on growers' observations, your results may vary. No part of this can be reused without written permission from the blog writer. We started seeding 6 types of melons on 31 Oct 2022. Generally, the planting guideline of sweet melons/cantaloupes from seed to harvest is around 80 to 90 days, assuming we did everything right. We were hoping that we can have good harvest on last week of January 2023 which coincide with the lunar new year.  (1st day of lunar new year is 22 Jan 2023, day 83 of melon journey). This is just a general guideline. For specified cultivar, please refer to the seeds pack instruction for exact planting guide. We used planting bags having 35cm diameter @ height of 40cm for all cultivars. Note: This melon series focus on growing behaviours of difference melons in same settings, compare and contrast the different cultivars. This post is purely based on growers' observations, your results may vary....

Note: No part of this document, be it pictures or content can be reproduced/reused without written permission from this blog owner. #Revisioning Revision 1 published on 21 Oct 2020 Revised edition on 17 Mar 2022 I am a film believer of soil health and beneficial microbes. I personally witnessed my clayey orange soil  transformed to  rich dark loamy texture soil over time with right beneficial microbes introduced when I first embarked on the journey to grow food for own consumption.  Yes, it takes time as compare to instant results using chemicals but it is definitely worth the while in the long run. I struggled for the first half to one year, see lights on second year and simply love it thereafter. 10 years on, you can take anything from my plot, but not my microbes rich soil. To grow food for fun and have that occasional harvests is a great experience. Growing food with expected harvests outcome at timely manner bring planting to a total different level. To have that, so...