Wine Cellars

When to Harvest a Honeydew Melon?

Honeydew melons (Cucumis melo spp.) Belong to the family of winter melons, together with Persian, Crenshaw, casaba and charental melons. Although they need warm weather to thrive, winter melons are so named because they take longer to ripen than summer kinds like watermelon. Understanding when to crop a honeydew melon is an issue of calculating dates based on the days to maturity of the cultivar, together with such sensory clues as texture, size and colour. Date Your seed packet provides an approximate date of when to begin to look for ripeness on your honeydew melons. Days will vary based on the cultivar — some take as long as 110 days — however most common cultivars ripen about 92 days following seed planting. Notice the date the seeds have been planted, and include the listed “days to maturity” to determine the approximate crop date. In Mediterranean areas, summer and winter melons…

Wine Cellars

How to Cross Breed a Pepper

Based on the match you’ve got in mind, cross breeding peppers is a straightforward undertaking. Most common peppers grown as annuals in the U.S. cross with abandon in nature and at the hybridizer’s hand. Armed with a basic knowledge of a few tools and pepper species to simplify the pollinating job, you are able to cross breed peppers just like a pro. A part of the equation is beating peppers and then waiting till next year to your results. Pepper Species and Compatibility Common peppers are dominated by five species. The most-widely grown, Capsicum annuum, is composed of sweet bell-type peppers along with sexy jalapenos (Capsicum annuum var. jalapeno). Capsicum chinense provides a number of the hottest of the hot, from habanero (Capsicum chinense var. Habanero) to Scotch bonnet (Capsicum chinense var. Scotch bonnet). Capsicum frutescens includes tabasco pepper (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco) and Thai hot chile (Capsicum frutescens var….