Bitter Melon Flowers

The female flowers on my bitter melon plant are finally open. It’s too cool.

I was first inspired to grow this vegetable because of the wonderful pictures and recipes on Indira’s blog Mahanandi. The Asian population here in Tennessee is less than 1%, so there are very few Asian grocery stores. The few that are here, are in Nashville, and are more of a conglomeration of Asian products, rather than one particular specialty. It’s hard to find all the ingredients for any recipe so I decided to order Asian vegetable seeds from Seeds of India to supply my own ridgegourd and bitter melons.

My poor watermelon has been attacked! Note the paw mark. There are also piles of scat near the watermelon. We think it may be rabbit poop. The strangest part of all is nothing was eaten were the poo is. A couple of beet leaves are gone and they also eat some string beans, but they’re mainly using the garden as a toilet!

Now we need to think of a way to protect the precious fruit from the hungry bunnies. Chopping down the tall weeds around the border will help blow the bunnies’ cover, it will just take a lot of work.