I am new with this as well. I love Kabocha squash and I had saved some seeds from one I bought at the health food store a few years ago. I was late in planting, probably late July and it took them about a month to really get going. The male flowers came first followed by the females about 3 weeks later. It is now August 2 and we just hand pollinated our first female flower this morning. I am so excited! We don't have many pollinators in this area and I had read before that if you want to ensure you get fruit you should probably hand pollinate, so, that is what we did. I planted only two squash this year. We have about 10 more female flowers that are not mature enough to open yet. I check them every day because the flowers are only open for a very short time, so, the window of opportunity is very small. I can't wait to watch the babies grow. I am hoping I can get about 10 squash off of the two plants. I have read you are lucky if you get one per vine, but, with hand pollinating I am hoping for at least two. I now have 5 vines growing. They are very aggressive and seem to take over whatever is in their path. I have a second year carrot growing for the seeds and the squash seems to be taking it down, literally. I also have spearmint growing to the side and so far I have been able to detour the squash by simply picking up the vine and moving it away from the spearmint. If you move them as they are first growing outward they seem easily deterred. I didn't have to move them much, maybe only 5 inches. I love these plants and have gotten a lot of joy out of watching. I water them every night when the sun goes down. I planted them in a manure enriched soil I bought at Walmart. I have not used any other fertilizer on them and they are growing great. However, I did read that the key to growing these squash is Patience, patience, patience. They are not something that grows overnight. Also, don't be too anxious to harvest them. They are suppose to stay on the vine until the vine dries up and falls away from the fruit. In the end they stem looks like that of a pumpkin. I hope you are enjoying your plants as much as I am mine. I am planning to plant a lot more next year and in a place in the yard where they have lots of room to branch out without worrying about them taking over any other plants. Good luck to you. :)

photo? Not sure what you are referring to as a seed pod. These trees make hanging inflorescences, which eventually develop into a huge number of red fruits, which have a single seed inside each one nearly as large as the fruit (entire fruit is a little smaller than your typical marble). If you peel away the thin soft layer of fruit, you will find what is the seed pod inside (a small, spherical brown nut) and inside that is the seed. These pods do NOT open on their own- they germinate from within the pods (or sometimes in an animal's gut). Usually there are many many hundreds of fruits per inflorescence. So not sure what you are referring to when you say you see two seed pods.....?

I am currently growing sweet aperitif tomatoes. Thompson & morgan says it is the sweetest tomatoes around and I did my own research, it is definitely the sweetest, but when I read on the internet, it seems not many people is growing it. We have only one season in Malaysia which is hot, hot and hot. Well there is two seasons here, rainy season and dry season. But rainy and dry season temperature is almost the same, Just example if today is cloudy and raining, temperature will be cooler by around 5 celcius, but as soon as the next day you will be back to square one that is hot unless it rains again. I grew my tomatoes on 29 May 2014 and it took only 3 days to germinate and packet says 7 days. It says germination temperature is 15-21 celcius more a less, but the afternoon temperature was around 37-39 celcius at the peak and around 28 celcius at the coolest and still germinate than less than half the time, sometimes people give lots of advise, I always believe this, never try never know and too many good cooks spoils the dish. My tomato plants is now 1 month and 1 week old and it already has flower buds. One packet seed has 10 seeds in it, some say it is a hybrid some says heirloom, whatever it is, if I do have extra seeds in the future, would you be interested in having some? If I do send postage is on me :-)

I'm in zone 9a but right on the fringe of 9b, on the gulf coast of Alabama. We tend to have a quite long growing season, so I'm hoping that my peppers are ripe, before its time to bring the plants inside for the winter (usually after Halloween!). My brother-in-law & I were feeling adventurous the other night, and decided to sample some of my black pearl pods. They haven't started to turn yet, but overall the flavor wasn't too bad. We both agree that the black pods taste similar to a jalapeño, both in flavor & heat. I also tried one of the still purplish-green mystery pods, and was hit by intense heat (much more than habanero) with the initial flavor of a bell, so overall, I'm quite impressed by this mysterious plant. One of my reapers is shedding petals & now has its 1st pods, so I'm uber excited.... Can't wait to sample these!!!!