Today, I would like to introduce to you my "first ever" bitter melon. This is the first time in my life to plant bitter melon and of course, the first time since I started vegetable gardening in 2021. Bitter melon is one of the vegetables that I love. I used to include it in some dishes that I cook like Ginisang Monggo, Tinolang Manok, and Pinakbet (using the fruit), or sautee it with eggs.

Since this is my first time I only planted one because I do not know how to take care of it at the moment. But I did see my father and many of my relatives planting it and I think there is nothing special on how they are taking care of it. With that being said, I think bitter melon is easy to grow and maintain. And I hope I will be successful.

Check out the photo of my bitter melon below. Sad to say I was not able to document its development.

As of now, my two papayas are only two feet high and I still do not know when they are going to start flowering. In my current way of life, whenever I have an opportunity to grow something I am going to try it. With that being said, when my wife brought home a ripe papaya I took its seeds and prepared it for storing to be used for the next planting (I still do not have a plan for when to plant papayas but if ever I will plant I will surely let the community know).

I first extracted the seeds

If you notice, papaya seeds have a transparent protective coating around each seed called "Aril". In my research, this transparent protective coating prevents it from germinating while still inside the fruit. I found out that farmers let it dry under the sun for a couple of days so that the protective coating will dry. So, I am going to let them dry under the sun until the coating is gone.

I tried to remove the protecting coating by hand manually but it got me lazy, so, I just let it dry under the sun for a couple of days until the coating is no longer visible (check the comparison below).

I said I am going to store the seeds right? But I am curious if they are ever going to germinate if I am going to plant them directly with the protective coating. So, I took a vacant pot in my garden and planted some seeds and see if they were going to germinate. Fingers crossed.

As of the moment I still have two Bottle Gourd that is still thriving and I already have three bottle gourds that are 3-5 inches tall. I am not going to plant more bottled gourd so I decided to store some seeds for the next planting. The seeds will be coming from one of the fruits of my bottle gourd.

I extracted the seeds by hand after splitting the bottle gourd into four sections.

And these are what I got after. This has me curious again, I got two kinds of seeds, white and brown. I wonder why they have different colors.

A few days ago, I took a photo of my chili (which I blogged). In the photo, all the chilis are still green in color. But just a few days after I am now seeing red. It is quite remarkable how fast chilis develop. Check out the comparison below.

That is all for now guys, catch you up with the next one. Wishing you all safety, good health, and abundance.