OT: You've got no room for a garden?

Win, Do you eat the bitter melon and luffa. How do yo eat the bittermelon? My wife has three different meals, but I only eat it one way. Gotta have Nuoc Mam with hot pepper to eat it. Are the luffa the sponge type? My wife grows both, bitter melon and luffa, actually two types of luffa, also wintermelon.

Mikek

My wife likes it strong and bitter, but I prefer it toned-down with scrambled eggs. She often throws sardines into the mix.

I do like the bitter-melon tea she makes. She also with makes a drink with watermelon.

Whoa, awesome, I have to try that!

Yes, but we don't leave them on the plant long enough to become fibrous. They're great chopped up in stew, stir fry, etc. Luffa and shrimp are a favorite.

How does she grow it, does it take up some precious footprint in your garden?

We grow multiple types of bitter melon, it grows well here in NE. We also grow multiple types of luffa, smooth and angled. I say "grow" tongue-in-cheek; we've not done well lately. Although the plants are tall, green and spout flowers, we aren't getting fruits! The one in the picture is all we've gotten so far this summer. :-(

Haven't tried wintermelon, will check it out.

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 Thanks, 
    - Win

Hand pollination:

Yes, my wife does one meal with eggs and bitter melon.

My mixes ground pork with a fungus that she buys dried and soaks it in water and cuts into skinny pieces. Also cuts vermicelli into short pieces. She mixes these and probably a few other items I'm not aware of all together. Then she slices the bittermelon from end to end on one side only and cleans out the seeds. Then stuffs the pork mixture into the bittermelon. This is boiled long enough to cook the meat. We then eat it and the broth on rice dribbled with the fish sauce and hot pepper sauce. It is an acquired taste!

She usually does soup, often with shrimp. The sponge luffa is not my favorite, I like the other style better, some have a buttery flavor.

My wife has quite a garden. We have a small yard, maybe

150 x 200, but she gets plenty on it. Some of our yard is fenced but we own outside the fence and that is where most of the Luffa or melon plants sprawl out. Some grows on a fence elsewhere in the yard. She even has Taro root that grow in the back way up into the trees in the wooded area in back. I like the taro (mush), again with fish sauce and hot pepper sauce. The mush is purple, I named it Barney soup when the kids were young.

The bittermelon do well on their own, many of our plants are voluntaries from the seeds she scraped out before cooking and threw in the garden. We have had different types, but I only notice the very wrinkly type now.

Be careful they will get to 40 lbs before you know it. Again make a soup. I made a trip to Orlando a few years ago, I had instructions to buy a wintermelon. She saved the seed and planted them on our side lot where she had not planted before. The whole side lot is covered with melon leaves.

A list from memory of what she is growing. Luffa, bitter melon, winter melon, basal, taro, lychees, longans, starfruit, Guava, blueberry's, peaches, pears, oranges, lemons, pomelos, tangerines, grapefruit, lemongrass, sugarcane, Thai hot peppers, pomegranate and some I have forgot and some I don't know the name of. Most of it grows well although, I'm still looking forward to pomegranate, this will be the second year in the ground. Oh, we have a Pecan tree also, I got the squirrels tamed, so we have not had to share the production the last two years.

Mikek

My mountain biking buddy strung a horizontal cable at the roof level, then vertical ropes down from that cable and anchored in the ground. Now he has Cascade and Cenntennial hops growing and creating a "green wall". You can make a lot of the good stuff with those hops.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

The trellis is brilliant for the vines, but how do you support the melons themselves, mesh bags tied to the trellis or something?

My wife wants to know for next year's squash, among other things.

Mark L. Fergerson

The trellis provides a stating point, but they aren't very high, 6 to 8 feet. The plants fasten themselves to the plastic siding of the house and can climb to the 2nd-floor roof. The fruits, which can be quite heavy, are supported just fine by the plant tendrils.

Everything dies after the first severe frost, and it's a simple matter to pull it all down off the siding, which seems to be perfectly fine for the experience. We've been doing this for 15 years. This works for bitter melon and luffa, I don't know about other plants. The wall of the house makes a great sun-reflector place to grow stuff.

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 Thanks, 
    - Win