#cucumis

Jill Raggett

Yooo guuuys you won’t believe how incredible good this thing tasted.😋😌

I absolutely love the colors and patterns of squash fruit! These are some of the varieties we experimented with in the garden this year. Growing seeds from store bought produce and even your own garden can have interesting results. There are four major genera of edible species: #Citrullus: #watermelon, #Cucurbita: #squash and #pumpkins, #Cucumis: #cucumber and #melon, and #Lagenaria: #calabash. Also of notable mention: two species of #Luffa (or loofah) produce fibrous fruits used as scrub brushes. Though the genera cross-pollinate, they won’t breed true, producing edible fruits. With Cucumis melons and Cucurbita pumpkins in your garden, pollinators will visit them all, fertilizing squash with melon pollen and melon with squash. Seeds in the pumpkin and melons alike will have both melon and pumpkin #DNA. Saving them to grow next year will result in pumpkin-melon hybrids, mostly likely unappetizing. Breeding true members of the #Cucurbitaceae family in the same space requires hand pollination with tools like bags covering flowers. Some of the acorn squash plants we grew from store bought produce were hybrid agricultural varieties. These developed both good looking squash, these strange little fruits and nothing at all like the squash they came from. Like hybrids of cross-pollination in your garden, hybrid varieties don’t breed true. Aaaaaaannyyway, I started this post planning to tell you that I’ll be drawing these experimental babies at Flagstaff Hullabaloo’s Cornucopia! I’m holding out until this Saturday Sept. 30th to illustrate our garden squash at the festival among much other fall themed shenanigans like pie eating contests and pumpkin patches. We of Indigo Art Market will be making and selling awesome stuff at our booth among the other great vendors. I can’t wait!! #Cornucopia #IndigoArtMarket #Flagstaff #Arizona #Botany #artistsofinstagram #illustratorsofinstagram #festival #fallfestival #natureishappiness #gardening #growyourownfood #relationshipswithnature (at Arizona)

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