Hi, Do you have any chinese okra seeds left? I would love to grow them this summer.

Different varieties have differing degrees of bitterness. Of those that I have grown, the larger, thicker varieties (with smooth warts) were the least bitter, and are the type that I prefer. These were mostly Chinese varieties, such as "Taiwan Large". The Japanese variety "Abashi" is also smooth warted & mild. Those with pointed warts & thinner flesh were more bitter; a friend uses them for pickling. "Taiwan" and "Ant" were two of them, both small-fruited. You can reduce the bitterness by cutting into pieces after cleaning, and salting the pieces (this leeches out some of the bitterness) and/or by par-boiling the pieces before using them. Keeping the vines well watered also reduces the bitterness somewhat. Bitter melon should be used immature, before the fruit begins to ripen. Once ripe, the red jelly-like flesh that surrounds the seeds is sweet & edible; if dried, it can be added to rice to color it during cooking. The seeds themselves should not be eaten. Some of our Filipino friends eat the vine tips & young leaves as a vegetable, but they are far too bitter for my taste. The wife likes bitter melon, and as mentioned above, it helps to lower blood sugar. I've tried to grow enough to parboil & freeze for winter use, but she generally gives most of it away to friends (it surprises me that so many are interested!) She generally uses bitter melon in soups; our favorite is an egg soup with bitter melon, tomato, and chicken. Some of our Filipino friends add it to "pinakbet", a thick stew with eggplant, winter squash, lima beans, chayote squash, and pretty much whatever fresh vegetable is on hand. Even with the best variety & treatment to reduce bitterness, however, the taste is not for everyone.

Fantastic. I got some melons and seeds out of some melons from some oriental people. They do not speak English so it is very difficult to talk to them. Very nice people. Now I know which one is the winter melon. However, there was another melon type with white interior that have seeds like the bitter melon. like arrows. I understand these may not germinate so easy. Anyway these melons are longer and green. As they get old in storage they tend to dry out almost. I did not want to grow this one next year. waste of time. or else I should eat these when young. The inside is a little more stringy than the better one. I like the one with the cucumber type seeds which must be the winter melons. and the other ones I dont like as well because the skin is very tough. very difficult to get the skin off. the one with the cuc seeds the skin comes off super easy if you simply cook it with the skin on it comes right off when cooked. so incredibly simple. just grab a corner and the entire skin comes off in one easy pull. The most amazing thing I have ever seen. The winter melon with the cuc seeds is very good to eat in soup. everyone should try it. It is really nice. I kept some seeds out of that one and hope they grow true to form. Thank you Dennis Peace Garden Dawgie

Shelley, Simply trellis your rattlesnake beans alongside the fence and grown them wherever you want. I grow beans on my woven wire fences all the time with little space between them and the shorter plants growing in the ground alongside them. You'll be amazed how happily other, shorter plants grow with trellised beans (and cucumbers, icebox melons, muskmelons, winter squash, gourds, etc.) growing right beside them or behind them. I trellis everything that is remotely vining in nature. Your dwarf tomato plants from The Dwarf Project ought to coexist peacefully with trellised beans growing on the fence behind them. The Dwarf Project tomato plants only get 2.5 to 4' tall, more or less, and are stocky and sturdy and won't mind having trellised beans (or anything else) growing behind them. Obviously taller indeterminate tomato varieties wouldn't be as tolerant of beans growing on the fence behind them. Scout your beds regularly because the bean plants will want to climb onto the tomato plants and cages to grow. When the vining plants do that, I just remove them from whatever cage or plant they're trying to latch onto and work that errant grown back through its trellis. Then I lecture it about not trying to take over the world. Luckily pole beans climb fast, so your bean plants should grow fast enough that the dwarf tomato plants cannot shade them out while they are small, and once the dwarf tomato plants are tall enough and wide enough that they might shade them out, the beans will be growing taller than the tomato plants. You also can grow Ha'ogen on a trellis. In the beginning, when I first trellised cantaloupes and muskmelons, I used knee-high stockings tied to the trellises to serve as slings or supports to hold the melons. I was afraid the weight of the melons would pull down the vines or that the weight would cause the melons to fall off the vines prematurely. I did that every year with great results, and then in one bad fire year, I didn't have time to tend the garden, and the melons grew fine without any sort of sling or support to keep the vine or fruit from falling off the trellis. Because I mulch heavily, I don't even worry about the muskmelons falling off the vines when they are mature. Usually, I can see and smell them and know when they are maturing and just pull them when they are forming the abscission layer and preparing to fall, but even if I miss one and it falls to the ground, it lands on that nice cushy 4-6" layer of mulch and doesn't crack. Once I knew the stocking slings or supports weren't necessary, I stopped wasting my time. To some extent you can control how your beans, squash and melons interact by planting the beans first and then waiting another month or six weeks before your plant the squash and melons. That gives the beans time to grow and gain some height before you plant the melons and squash. In my garden, all the trellised plants that are growing close together tend to run all together into one big massive wall of green, and I don't mind it at all. They still produce loads more than we can eat fresh, leaving plenty to be preserved for future meals. Sometimes it is fun to watch them slug it out to see who wins. (In my garden, so far, Seminole pumpkin outgrows and outlasts everything else, so it is the queen of my garden.) Don't be afraid to try trellising one plant behind another. You never will know what will work for you, in your soil and growing condtions and with your set-up, until you try it. Some of my most favorite growing methods and plant combinations were nothing but experiments the first time I tried them. One year my beloved pink eye purple hull southern peas decided they wanted to be tomatoes. They outgrew their bed, reached across the 2' -wide garden pathway, and climbed the tomato cages all the way to the top....then cascaded back down again. Was it a problem? Well, it was a problem as far as using the pathway was concerned, but it wasn't a problem in terms of growth and production. We had huge yields of tomatoes and huge yields of PEPH peas. You would have thought the tomatoes wouldn't have liked having pea vines climbing all over their cages and partially shading them, but they didn't seem to mind at all. Since sunscald sometimes is a problem on tomatoes in the hottest part of the summer, maybe I should routinely add one PEPH plant to each tomato cage. (grin) I now grow all the southern peas in the back garden since it has sandier soil, and I don't grow a lot of tomatoes back there, but in the year they shared those tomato cages, it wasn't a problem. Clearly, it isn't a planting combination I ever would have thought of or planted on my own. I like little garden surprises like that, although they don't always end well. It is just that this particular garden combination worked. If you're already running out of space with your 2' wide beds, are we going to see 3' wide or 4' wide beds next year? Lawn grass? Who needs a lawn? Dawn