Thought I'll round this thread off by showing you the development of these Sharks Fin Marrows. I have learnt alot since we began to take an interest in growing these in 2003. Here is on what NOT to do and also add our disappointments.
2003 - The hubby got up in the middle of the night and urinated on the plants. He thought he was back in China, but Her Indoors has taught him to use the lavatory instead.
2004 - Yes he has learnt to use the lavatory BUT thought that the young marrows resembled a woman's boobs so he started to squeeze them! Each baby marrow is lined with tiny hairs that are like nettles, this is to protect them from slugs etc. So if this lining is damaged, it sends a message to the fruit that it can no longer protect itself so its shrivels up. So Her Indoors commands him to go and play with something else!
2005 - Our marrows were doing so well, hubby can use the toilet and found other things to play with, along can the vandals - young children who blocked our small river off and made themselves a diving pool - stripped the entire bark off some trees, frightened all the families of ducks away so my hubby has nothing to play with - he fed these every morning. Then, they saw our marrows and smashed many to pieces. So we threaten to throw chicken poo over them if they come near our property again.
2006 - The vandals stayed away - so far but there are not many marrows this year because of the weather. It is strange that by doing a survey amongst our Chinese community, most marrows grown this year - the plants have turned out to be 'sterile' - these plants though from the same batch of seeds grow extremely well, the leaves are huge but the flowers are males that are very stunted (just the bulb is visible) and never seem to bloom. As soon as we realised each sterile plant we destroyed because they were taking the goodness out of the soil.
As usual with each crop the female blooms first and without the pollen from the male - no fruit <<< I cannot believe that I am still teaching my hubby this because there has been heartache on my behalf this year. What I have learnt this year is that you cannot pollinate a closed female bloom and NEVER trust the hubby's word! From the second lot of flowering I managed to find a male bloom and used it's pollen to fertilise this female flower that was hidden just behind the fence. This marrow will become OUR matured one because I want to retrieve it's seeds for next year so I will wait until all the leaves are withered, it is going to be the last to be picked.
Never trust my hubby's word! Why? When about a dozen blooms came out, the bees were busy so I left them to do the pollinating because my hubby says they were doing a good job. Then by evening I went to inspect, found only one male pollen -ness bloom. It was a gamble for the bees to use the pollen from THAT bloom to pollinate so many females. So my worst fears were confirmed, all the female blooms were not fertilised hence, no fruit. This is my greatest heartache this year because I had a chance - if I had got to that male bloom before the bees .....I have also learnt that timing is essential, I must get to the male blooms (very, very scarce at the start of each crop) before the bees. That dozen if I had did the pollination would have been huge now to co-incide with the fine weather in July but now I have to be satisfied with these. They have become so stunted this year and most have stopped growing - the skin is going darker and darker.
Lily - with such knowledge I can't wait until next year now.
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