Family Life and Career

Believe it or not, I haven’t always been a gardener. Though I have always loved living things. When I was young I really enjoyed the creepy crawlies, such as insects, reptiles and amphibians. The vast majority of these creatures were found within the biodiversity of the Santa Cruz Mountains. After growing up in the Bay Area, I served a mission, then returned home and married a beautiful young woman less than a year after I returned.

 Me with my bug box and trusty net.

 

Can you tell I loved insects? 

Fast forward to 2007, my wife and I had our last child and I was starting my career as a teacher of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. Over the years I have loved working with the Deaf community and the children who are living life with their hearing loss. I have cherished the colleagues and the relationships I have made with them, the students and all those who I have been able to work with throughout the years.

 

But of all the things I am grateful for, along with God, I am most grateful for my little family. I am grateful for the family I came from, but also for my wife and children. They mean so much to me. We have worked with our children over the years and seen them go off to college. Helping to raise growing children has been an honor and seeing them transition out into the world has definitely left me feeling some loss in my life.

 

Around the same time our last child was born, I gave up my very time-consuming hobby of raising praying mantids to start a garden. Little did I realize that this hobby, like others, could eventually be consuming. Over the years, I have worked to temper my ambitions in relation to my gardening – in order to ensure that I made room for the most important things.

 

I would definitely say that I am grateful to be able to share my life with my family and friends. I cherish my relationship with each of them – but especially with my very close friends. I am so grateful for the association I have had with them and the bond that I have had with many who share my love of gardening. While there are times in each day that pass slowly, as I look back at some of the themes of my life, it can be hard to believe that things have progressed so quickly.

 

Gardening has been a wonderful hobby for me. I hope that I can continue to share my love of Gardening through this blog and my various other outlets.

The Scientific Gardener Looking back at the Past, Living in the Present and Anticipating the Future

Since November 14th, 2011 I have been learning from my garden. But the young child in my first blog post, who is now twenty years old. He, along with my other three children, are all grown up and moving away. In a departure from my regular posts, in the next series of posts I will be sharing a little about my life, my gardening up to this time, the development of my seed shop and finally my vision for the future of this blog.

 

 

 Thank you to any of you who have joined me over this time. While I am planning on continuing the blog in some ways, the format may alter in order to accommodate some of the other demands from my garden and from life.

The Spredda Leccese Scuro in New York

Another grower, from New York State, grew out the Carosello Spuredda Leccese Scuro for me. Instead of attempting to grow them in an open field, Nathaniel grew them in a high tunnel. Other than some confusion near the end of the season over how to properly dry the seeds, Nathaniel did a good job of growing the seed out. While there is a learning curve involved in growing and processing cucumber and melon seed, the grower can greatly increase the quality of the seed, if they just complete some minor winnowing. Taking out the lower quality seed enables the heavier seed to remain dry and viable.

 

 

 

Sacramento’s Palestinian Faqous:

This last year I felt very blessed to be able to work with a Sacramento area grower to produce another crop of the Palestinian Faqous. The grower, Christy, was very teachable and worked hard to produce a fine crop of these cucumbers. Here are a few pictures of the Palestinian Faqous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Jordanian Faqous

While those in the United States may refer to immature melons that are grown as cucumbers as “Armenian” cucumbers, those in the Arabic speaking world often refer to them as Fakkous or Faqous. These melon-cucumbers are generally light in color and can be long, semi-long or slightly short. Depending on where they are grown, they may have some other traits that they are selected for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The germplasm that I received for this specific Faqous was collected by a work colleague who was visiting some friends or family in Jordan. Before leaving on her trip, she promised to pick up some seed for me. I was under the impression that the seed that she had provided me with would be a Palestinian variety called the Beit Sahour Faqous, but it turned out that what I received was a variety that is popular in the markets of Jordan. There, the fruit is picked very young, often with the intention of having locals use it for pickling cucumbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The plants grew well and were generally problem-free until near the end of the season. That is when every muskmelon tends to succumb to Powdery Mildew. But until then, I was free to hand-pollinate the little female flowers that would develop on the meandering vines without the fear of spreading any disease. Once the fruit had set, it took a while to mature. This would definitely be a good trait for farmers who want to collect the fruit every few days, instead of having to pick all the fruit at once. Fruit that matures quickly results in either a lot of babysitting or a lot of wasted food, as those fruit that are often discarded because they don’t meet the customers’ standards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the season, I was able to harvest enough fruit with good seed that I was able to ensure that I have the seed for another season. Often I am provided with seed that may go bad within the next 12 months. In these cases, it is imperative that I grow out at least a small quantity of the variety to ensure sufficient vigor in the population to keep it going. I look forward to growing the Jordanian faqous another year and hope to be able to provide this small variety on sprawling vines to many others.