Hi all,
Edwin. Northeast NJ (zone 6?). Raised compost garden bed
This year, among the other obscure vegetables I'm trying, I'm trying this kind of melon called the casabanana. Sicana odorifera.
It's supposed to need a real long season to flower and ripen fruit, it's a tropical, so being in Jersey ain't exactly the best location. However, we do get at least 90 days of real hot weather, so I figure it's worth a try.
One way I figure I could get a head start is by inducing flowering somehow. I've read that for fruit trees, and trees in general, if you graft a flowering branch onto a non-flowering tree, it will actually start flowering because of the flowering hormones in the branch scion. I figure I could at least try something like that.
Either try grafting from a flowering squash or melon plant, or maybe use a syringe and just inject the juices from the stem, because surely the hormones for flowering are in the juices.
I mean there's the obvious application of phosphate to push that flowering/fruiting along, I thought of that, that's obvious. But what about something like this grafting thing?
Or anything like that, I could try.
Thoughts? Ideas on stuff I could do?
Edwin. Northeast NJ (zone 6?). Raised compost garden bed
This year, among the other obscure vegetables I'm trying, I'm trying this kind of melon called the casabanana. Sicana odorifera.
It's supposed to need a real long season to flower and ripen fruit, it's a tropical, so being in Jersey ain't exactly the best location. However, we do get at least 90 days of real hot weather, so I figure it's worth a try.
One way I figure I could get a head start is by inducing flowering somehow. I've read that for fruit trees, and trees in general, if you graft a flowering branch onto a non-flowering tree, it will actually start flowering because of the flowering hormones in the branch scion. I figure I could at least try something like that.
Either try grafting from a flowering squash or melon plant, or maybe use a syringe and just inject the juices from the stem, because surely the hormones for flowering are in the juices.
I mean there's the obvious application of phosphate to push that flowering/fruiting along, I thought of that, that's obvious. But what about something like this grafting thing?
Or anything like that, I could try.
Thoughts? Ideas on stuff I could do?