And you won’t find these in the shops. cucamelons.
A one of my favorite cucumbers to cart, also known as Mexican sell kids, mouse melons and adorable.
Other people think I’m growing watermelons because the skin does look a lot like watermelon. It’s tiny, but definitely on the cute factor but they’re also a really practical vegetable to grow.
For me I have struggled to grow cucumbers, data cucumbers in our garden and this is the first year I figured out why. A couple of it took me so long because we have a shady garden.
Cucumbers were soft leaves organic vegetables that no I realized that was during the sandwich so we struggled to grow them. We just don’t have the full sunspots. And what I love about them so many things first is that they can grow in part as you can see here we have our cucumbers where we were what was great, like how many people leave their water tank. I mean you see there will take everywhere instead they will be covered in a forest of cucamelons like we have here because they saw a small need to weigh it down either to put on some fine netting and they will happily scramble or the surface on an otherwise wasted surface. And that’s also why we have what it takes to try and reflect as much light as we have such a shady garden. We’ve got to maximize any little skeptical of light and reflecting from a white surface is one of the ways that these faces dwarf these cucamelons really because in this area, suns blocked up by the huge tree up there which is a neighbor’s yard. Evergreen that works out all year round. And this is a very shady spot.
There’s not a huge number of people to cover for that.
So that’s one of the reasons I love them. Second reason is because trout Florin another reason why I haven’t been able to grow cucumbers, they need so much water.
Basically 99% Water, they’re filled with water, whereas cucamelons On the other hand, are really drought tolerant. They originate from Mexico, as I’m able to grow them even with my poor ordering habits. Thirdly, cucumbers in our garden as you might have experienced team suffer from powder and particularly ones growing in shady Adana conditions. Our sense of compassion we’ll do weekly, virtually initially resistant to powdery mildew, I’ve never seen them get up at the very end of the season. When they’re about to die back. Please do.
Well, the yellowing is actually due to under feeding. And that’s that’s another issue. But it’s not due to powder or underwatering.
Another thing I love about them is that they’re also cold tolerant so they have almost all the best characteristics that standard covers don’t have these for us. We’ll stop juicing them early, mid to late summer into autumn and even when they finish up, they start producing exactly at the point where last cucumbers have given up on life. And it means that we get to extend our season a part of the auto production still and I’m gonna give it a fee to stimulate the course of a more flowers and more fruit and I see some up here. See the tiny little yellow flowers are small
and it’s growing up onto the top of our water. Harvest I might grab I’m gonna give it a feed and encourage it to produce more fruit for us that do take a while to get going in our climate so some people will grow them haven’t gotten any fruit and it’s already the end of summer. Don’t give up they’re actually stopped producing once the weather cools down which is effective timing for smoothing your consumption of cucumbers your cucumber lover.
You can see we have our growing in a large pot and this pots about 50 centimeters deep and about 20 fives across the top. And in this this year we bought last year I had four and it was extremely productive. So these two plants have covered mostly the site of the water tank and on the other side we have symmetric one double pot there with two more cucamelons I can future years I might even reduce it to one plant because they are competing with each other which is quite hungry and cucumbers are hungry plants. And one plant with these nutrients is probably a better ratio.
And you can see here we’ve netting over our water tank tied around the back and it’s become the perfect growing trellis for our cucamelons growing them in a standard garden bed growing vertically like
and encouraging cucamelons to grow up it. If you let it sprawl in your garden bed that’s fine but it’s going to waste a lot of space and take over the entire bed and it also will be more susceptible to mildew and fungus diseases because it doesn’t have as good airflow and it also maximizes the light that hits the plant.
See it’s quite a vigorous grower when we’ve got two plants on each side and they’re really taking over the world attack
around the slide about what to take to you might even be once around the back of the hunt around there.
You have a look at the top.
What’s going on up there.
Hamster standing on a milk crate. Fortunately our water tanks not that tall, like you’d see mine all over the top as well. And it’s actually well the new flowers up here because this is the sunniest spot and this is the advantage of growing vertically we can catch a lot of the sun that we just simply don’t have down or shaded out by the water tank by the other garden structures like the shares.
neighbor’s carport really this section gets no sun.
Amazing that the cucamelons can grow so well.
Shade but the ones up here to tap into a lot of sun leaving in that sun. This is where you’re some baking up here and it’s really hot. My face is different than up here so it was really warm. And this might be where we get our later flush of fruit.
So sunny up here as the temperatures start to cool down here. They’re not going to be as productive.
I’ve had a whole family of snails flying behind the cucamelons leaf and behind the netting. I’m gonna just simply squish these babies I’m so sorry.
And that into them off.
So glamorous way to do this. That’s so gross. But ask gardeners are used to really gross geeky thing and I’m gonna just gently wipe the old to the soil here with a weed and that’s also going to be federalized for our cucamelons Sorry baby snails cucamelons produce male and female flowers just like standard cucumbers. You can see here this is a male flower and the flowers are sore, teensy tiny disease is a male because it’s just blue yellow flower without a baby. You can go back. Let’s compare this to a female and see that like gosh, they were ready for the baby cucumbers are so small that’s the size of a grain of rice. Great a barley little baby fruit with a yellow flower on the end. It’d be really good to go with that so I don’t snap it off as my one up here. That’s for me.
Still got some Snail gunk on my head cucamelons Melons do the pollination and you need to encourage bees if you want hates of cucamelons like we have here. You need to encourage bass to come and move the pollen from the male flower into the female flower because you’re not going to do this so tiny, normal cucumbers you might but not these, you’re gonna rely on your insect pollinators in order to cross pollinate them.
cucamelons are said to be perennial. I personally have not experienced this after many years of growing them I have not successfully overwinter them once. And I’ve never really sprouted so I’ve replanted from seed generally every spring.
I have lifted them before. And once you pull them out, it’s quite surprising but it’s a huge tuber.
White tuber that can be quite long and usually and you think with overwinter because it kind of looks like a potato. But unfortunately I’ve not had any success. So there were times where I left the plant in the soil like this and marched really heavily over winter hoping that they would come back. But come spring come summer nothing emerged. So I had to plant and replace with new seed.
I’ve also lifted the tuber out before the shed in dry, airy spot. All the things I’m supposed to do and I planted that and it still didn’t come back. So give it a go.
But plants and backups because in my experience it’s a bit hit or miss it’s not as reliable in terms of ratio as some of the other peripherals. So for me it’s not a true perennial, but in warmer climates, maybe it will be because we do get quite cold winters and maybe the tubers don’t.
But potentially wonderful climbing perennial right in addition to forest. We recommend that and now we’re going to do some taste test and a cut tomorrow and do a taste test and let you know what I think. Okay, in our makeshift outdoors.
I’ve got cucamelons here and I picked two different ones to show you how much the size can vary.
When they’re picked bigger, like this one, they’re going to be a bit more sour so the name Salah Mexican Gurkha does tell you that this lead for sale that static cucumbers which makes them perfect.
But when they’re like this, they’re more sour than when they’re smaller where they’re much smaller. You can see I can get quite a big size.
If you zoom right above that you might think with that scale that I’m holding.
That’s let’s cut it open and see what looks like inside
the bigger one first
the skin is much firmer than standard cucumber.
All that red color is meant to be there. I was just cutting another fruit before our strawberry guava. And you can see inside. It’s green and white. It’s not a watermelon. It’s not red. And it looks like a cucumber.
It’s got a little seeds here, which if you left long enough, they would form and harlot and let’s cut
in mustard thermos here, then standard cucumbers that’s more green, because that’s a younger, more tender fruit. And that’s a bit more white to the older. So let me do a taste test.
That tasting the younger one first.
Definitely a two way skin inside. It’s quite soft.
And it’s just like a cute little teensy bit more. So now I’m going to try one of these bigger ones
that’s a Frenchie and that is a lot more on top and in a really nice way to case kind of like limit
to a cucumber, which will be actually awesome for a salad because he just kept raising and you have to dress your salad dressing all in one go and get into that
I’m not so nice. I really enjoy that.
They will be amazing.
And we’re going to do some of that this season. So I’ll show you that process.
Some but we’re gonna get gobbled up and then perfect lunchbox size fruit. There’s no cutting required for lunch boxes and the small ones can just go straight onto the salad almost like cherry tomato. Throw it straight on
straight off the vine and now I’m going to try one hole.
Straight in
skin definitely takes more to that so the cucumber flavor is amazing. That’s really young. I heard that increased your appetite for growing these delicious little cucumbers they’re so cute and easy to grow.
RP found that interesting and enjoyable and you learned something from it. As always, if you enjoyed please remember to LIKE subscribe to our channel and share with your friends as this helps us to grow and to keep featuring more unusual and interesting fruit and vegetables. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time