When the California Rainy Season stopped almost as soon as it started last winter, I got serious about researching ways to keep the garden going thru yet another year of drought. There has been a lot of talk of water usage cutbacks, voluntary and otherwise, and I wanted to be ready. I changed everything from the way I started seeds to how much and what I compost. And I discovered that this is the perfect time to explore the many Cucurbits I have been interested in growing.

The “Gourd Family”, Cucurbitaceae, includes muskmelons, watermelons, cucumbers, summer squash, and winter squash and pumpkins. It’s sometimes referred to as the plant family with the most varieties grown as food for humans. This family also includes luffa, which can be grown as food or sponges, or both. (I’ll have to remember to plant some of those.) Cucurbits need warmth, sun, space, and many of them are call ‘heavy feeders’ but luckily for me, the one thing they don’t need all that much of is water. Cucurbits like to grow in well-drained places in soil that is sandier than it is clay. In wet years or humid places these plants tend to suffer from fungus or bacteria.

That makes this the perfect year to try out as many members of this family as I can find room for. I began with cucumbers which I love in a quick Asian-inspired marinade or tossed whole into the juicer. I put in ‘Persian,’ ‘Armenian,’ and ‘Homemade Pickle’ which was the first to produce a cucumber this year. And I just started seeds for a second planting of the ‘Armenian’ cucumbers in case the early plantings get ahead of me and an unpicked fruit or two stop them from producing.

I also started seven different varieties of squash. I even mapped out the different squash varieties so I could still save seed. I am growing ‘Upper Ground Sweet Potato,’ ‘Lakota,’ and ‘Spaghetti’ in the front garden, with ‘Candy Roaster Melon’ squash, ‘Sugar Pie’ pumpkins, ‘Rugosa’ butternuts, and ‘Green-Striped Cushaw’ in the back garden. That keeps the C. pepo, C. moschata, and C. maxima squash from crossing. And leaves me one spot still open in case I want to grow more cushaw-types or find another C. argyrosperma I want to try. I like the look of this ‘Tennessee Sweet Potato.’ Then I could compare it to the ‘Upper Ground Sweet Potato’ and the other cushaw-type and see what works best.

2009 ‘Rainbow Sherbet’ Icebox Watermelon

And then there are the melons. Last year we did not have nearly enough watermelons, and the year or two before that the kids all-too-quickly ate through what ‘Amish’ melons we had, so this dry year is a good excuse to try a few more varieties and see if we can find at least a few that will produce well for us. I’m trying the ‘Amish’ again, even though the ones I started too early are half dead. I was taking a chance that the early warm weather would stay with us, but the cool nights were too much for them. Now that it’s almost June I’m adding ‘Crimson Sweet’ to the ‘Hopi Yellow’ watermelons and ‘Kajari’ melons that are surviving. I’m trying two additional great-fleshed melons, ‘Eden’s’ and ‘Sakata’s Sweet’, one large, and one small–though in this dry year, it won’t surprise me if all the melons are small. I added one F-1 ‘Cantaloupe’ to the mix just to have something to compare against and because it was growing so nicely at the nursery, and some ‘Charentais,’ I also plan to try adding in a Tuscan heirloom as soon as the seeds come.

Do you have some favorite cucurbits in your garden? I’d love to hear which ones do well for you.

This year it’s all about what can survive in the very low-water growing conditions we’re experiencing on the left-side of the country. In the Dirt to Dinner garden a lot of my growing is focused on squash, cucumbers, melons, and a few other drought-resistant crops. Which apparently includes salsify and  artichokes. I just have two artichoke plants near one another in a corner of the garden and they are feeding my family and two others with all the artichokes we need and some of the buds have still flowered and gone to seed. It’s a hot, dry spot, surrounded on two sides by sidewalk, and, honestly, I have not been very attentive to the patch this year–at all. Maybe the roots are feeling the drought pressure and sending out as many buds as possible to insure survival long-term? I honestly don’t know, but please pass the Hollandaise.

Another crop doing especially well this year is the runner beans. Runner beans are happily perennial in my climate, but they don’t last forever. Most years they all die back to the roots for the winter and in the spring it’s normal for a few not to regrow. I don’t have them tagged by year, so I can’t tell you what their life-span should be, but under my high-stress growing conditions I’m pretty thrilled with the return rate. This year they were especially early, growing new vines and leaves by early April. And now, in spite of the unusually cool spring temperatures and cloudy (but rainless!!) days, they are beginning to flower. This year I have added in additional patches of ‘White Romanian’ runner beans, which I understand will have fully white flowers, instead of the lovely, hummingbird-attracting plain-red, red-and-white, or red-and-pink flowers most of my other beans grow. I like runner beans for their usefulness at all stages of bean production, their beautiful flowers, and the big, fat dry beans they give me for chili or soups all winter. If they are also able to produce in spite of the lack of moisture I will have just the excuse I need to collect even more of them. ;-)

I am also surprised and pleased by how well the potatoes are doing with very little water in their tall beds of straw. Potatoes probably should not be your first choice as a sustenance crop in an arid climate, but I love them and started them as early as possible this year to take advantage of what moisture was available while the weather was still cool and as of Memorial Day weekend, I have to say I am encouraged. The soil around the stems is dry and dusty, but the plants look healthy and have moved through their Sleep, Creep, and Leap stages pretty much on-time. The ‘Ozette’ fingerling potatoes in the back garden are slower-growing than I would like. I don’t know if that’s the variety or the conditions. Since they are often referred to as the oldest variety in commercial cultivation, I am willing to bet they are widely adapted and will do their best in their mulch pile on their own schedule.