Since I already have Sigourney (given to me as a seedling), I ordered 4. Oh, how I wish I had enough money and space to get both collections! I got Kona Coast, The Thin Air, and two I have been watching since their maiden bloom in Curt's seedlings fields... Mother Upduff and Paradise Bar and Grill. I think P.Bar&G is much prettier than the photo he used in the catalog. Sort of a Jerry Hyatt with intense magenta eye. I had such a difficult time deciding which ones to get. I have a seedling out of Rock Lobster that looks somewhat similar to Mother Upduff. I have been crossing it to big spiders, like Bali Watercolor. I think there is a lot of potential in what we can get from crossing these intensely pinched things to spideries. Sigourney is SO different. It intensely pinches all the time, and has the most unusual throat. Not easily fertile, but does pass it's odd throat on to it's kids. I have always loved the unusual stuff. Walking Curt's seedling fields is quite an experience. From mini's to 6 feet tall, unreal patterns, and forms. He is really working on this new thing he calls frosting or fractilized edges. Kirlian Photography is the latest intro with this. One of it's parents, Photon Torpedo has given me the MOST unusual things! By far my favorite parent to date. I've never been a fan of the look that is so popular now - the big edges, the wide petals...things like ruby reds with huge yellow chicken fat... blech! But give me one of Curt's "out there" things and I am a happy camper. I also got Piece of my Heart last year, and can't wait to see it blooming here! I'm waiting for Illusive Phase Shifter to increase enough to get a piece of it. If you like the frosty, fractal edges, an older one, Masked Emotions, and also Touch of Faust are very nice, and not as expensive as these newer ones. okbt, you mentioned "Film Noir"... I have grown both parents for years. Through Dark Waters is one of my all time favorite purples. Terrific performer here - even though its in the perennial border and not in the daylily beds, so it doesn't have the best soil or conditions. I really wanted to order Unpredictable You - but last fall I got his Fad Gadget. They are half sibs and remind me a lot of each other, but Unpredictable You does tend to be a bit more..... unpredictable... in form. LOL. I am not one for having a flower look the same each day. I much prefer one that's going to show me a different face depending on what point in the bloom cycle it is, or the weather conditions. Since I try to keep my cultivars under 100 due to health reasons, having flowers that don't look the same each day makes each morning I go look at them a gift of wonder. In response to why he does not list bud counts - it's because so much depends on weather, watering and the gardener's soil condition. I know I have many daylilies that one year will have bud count of 10 and the next 35. I use very little fertilizer, and being on a well, only water when I absolutely have to. Curt grows in very highly organic soil, and has a huge pond that he waters out of. His plants almost always have better branching and bud count than when I grow them here. I do find that his plants over all are tough as nails though, considering that I treat them like garden perennials and not pampered babies.

I assume you are referring to Momordica charantia, aka Bitter Melon or Balsam Pear? It is a less well-known (in the USA) member of the Cucurbitaceae family. We do not know enough about the fresh bitter gourds you have, unless you harvested them yourself, to know if they were fully mature when harvested. When you harvest for seed-saving from members of the cucurbit family, it is best to let the fruit get overripe. For example, with cucumbers you leave them onto the vine until they turn yellowish-orange. I think the same thing would be true of bitter melon/bitter gourd if you wanted to save seed from it. With cucurbits, in order to harvest the best and the most seeds to plant, it is best to leave the fruit on the vine for about 3 weeks after you'd harvest it to eat. That extra time on the vine allows the seeds to mature. So, if your bitter gourds had enough time on the vine, the seeds likely are viable (assuming they were pollinated by insects). The only way to know is to try some. Scoop them out of the bitter melon and let them dry. You should dry them to the point that you can snap one in half. If they bend but don't break, they aren't dry enough. Then you can plant them or store them. Bitter melon seeds germinate in a week or two in really warm conditions (soil temps between 75 and 85 degrees). If you want, you can ferment the seeds before drying them. Fermentation often will kill some disease pathogens and also often gives you a higher germination rate. Bitter melon seeds are very hard once dried, so to increase the odds of getting good germination, scarify the seed coat by nicking it with a knife, but don't cut too deeply into the seed. You just want to nick the coat, not cut the whole seed in half. If you want to buy bitter melon seeds, they are available from several online retailers. I think the first time I bought any it either was from Seed Savers Exchange or from Willhite Seeds, but that was a long time ago. Evergreen Seeds would have several varieties of bitter gourd/bitter melons, and so will Kitazawa Seeds, which I've linked below. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Kitazawa Seed---Bitter Melon Selections

I think that might have been like that because figs that we eat are Ficus Carica. Ficus is the genus, and the Carica is something else but they gave it that name because figs have deeply lobed leaves like papayas. Now the genus for papaya is Carica. Maybe they just wanted people to think they wiould be recieving a beatiful stalky plant that has some of the most beautiful leaves (papaya), or maybe they are just not to smart. What ever it is I'm glad you pointed this out

This is very nice. But, I live in rural Illinois also. They should have built all of the seating in an enclosure. Summer is to hot to sit out in the day. At night, they are gonna be eaten alive by mosquitoes especially near that corn field. Tiki torches don't do anything. Since they didn't have this before they never had a reason to go hang out there. Now they are gonna find out what their in for. I built a huge beautiful deck a couple of summers back. Now Im gonna build a screened off pergola on top of it.