Here is a Thread for documenting my ongoing pepino grex project. It was pretty hard to get diverse seeds but i ended up getting 5-6 relatively unique pepinos. I sowed them in late december indoors. I can already see some diversity in leaf shape and stem color. I also sowed some tzimbalos for them to cross with.
Ironically, i have never even tried pepino or tzimbalo, but i cant imagine that theyre so bad tasting. And if I end up hating them ill still save seeds and someone else can hopefully continue the grex
Excited to follow along with this project! I’ve cultivated pepinos in the past multiple years in greenhouses and something I will share is the first year we let them grow into a mat on the ground, they rooted like crazy and made a lot of fruit but that way of growth also encouraged a lot of pests like spider mites, this can be improved through applications of compost tea and other methods I’m sure if you don’t want to deal with trellising but the next year we let them trellis up para cord assisting with twisting them around the rope occasionally, this was in my opinion the way to grow and I also felt the quality of fruit was much better with more airflow I felt they were able to get riper where’s as the humidity of hiding under there own leaves sometimes let them mildew before fully ripening or bugs would find them as soon as they were beginning to ripen when we left them on the ground, this may be a different experience if your growing outside or in a greenhouse with excellent airflow, but maybe this advice will help on your journey, looking forward to pics and to hear if you like the flavor!
Great advice! Did you prune them at all or let them get as bushy as they want and keep all the side shoots? Some sources online say that pepinos can be grown and pruned the same way as tomatos but other sources say differently, its quite confusing
Oh good question!! We did a mix, when trellising I let most of them have two leads, maybe a third of if I missed it I would just add extra rope and kind of pull them away from one another with airflow and for a couple I only let one lead I don’t really remember a difference in production, they are quite prolific plants I think if I did it again I’d let them have a couple leads from the beginning but I’d let them grow along the ground the first couple weeks to promote a stronger healthier rooting system and then bring the 2/3 leads in different directions!
Then pruning is probably the way to go, as theyre growing indoors in a pretty cramped grow tent right now haha. Thanks for the good advice! I will definetly try trellising them like you suggested! Do you happen to have seeds laying around from your pepino growings?
Here are some pictures of what they look like as of now. I can already see at least three quite different pepinos. The first ones have Purple stems which the others dont have. Unfortunately i didnt keep track of which seeds came from where, but i would guess that the Purple stemmed ones are from verken zaden as they write on their website that they select for Purple fruits and stems.
And one pepino that is kind of an anomaly. I dont know if its due to a mutation but it has got ruffled leaves and a sort of brown callusing on the stem and veins of leaves, perhaps its caused by some disease?
I’ve tried the Cultivated Pepino Melons, they taste like a Honeydew Melon with slight tomatillo texture, very mild & delicious. Tzimbalo I’ve read has the similar Sweet flavor like pepino melon but tends to be more tangier & Juicy (Taste Citrusy Cucumber that becomes sweeter & fruitier the longer they are left on the plant). The more sour reputation is has may simply be people harvesting it slightly before it’s fully ripe (They can ripen off the plant like tomatoes).
Very excited to see you growing Pepino Melons! Interesting to see the diversity already, Did you plant any of the Wild Tzimbalo Pepino Melons yet?
As for Pepino Melon Diversity, there are 3 basic colors, Green, Purple skin & Yellow Skin. I’ve only ever tried the yellow skin types I find at my grocery store. But they also come in all sorts of shapes & sizes.
If you are decent with grafting, I would try grafting them on Tomatoes. If I had the space, I would personally experiment with grafting tomato seedlings onto Pepino melon plants & vice versa (In hopes that maybe a the red fruit color from tomatoes could be transferred into Pepino Melons via Horizontal Gene Flow).
I think the tzimbalo will be more of my taste, as I like a little bit of tangyness in my fruit.
Yeah the variety in everything from growth habits and Vigor to stem coloration and bushyness, and leaf shape is showing up. One of my pepinos is really taking off while the five others are still getting established. I have the tzimbalos growing aswell, if you want i can post some pics. They dont seem to be super happy though as the leaves are getting weird yellow spots and coloration. The tzimbalos are all from the same source, no real Diversity there. Maybe i shouldve gotten different sources for the tzimbalos aswell…
I thought the green color is always from unripe fruit.
I wanted to get columbian Purple large pepinos for the grex, but the seller hasnt been able to send the seeds. Ive been trying since december last year and after three attempts from the seller to send the package, it seems like it just keeps getting lost. Really bummed about that
I had that exact same idea! Great minds think alike. I ended up not doing it due to a lack of pepino seeds and lack of Space, so i wanted to just Focus on getting these pepinos to fruit and save all the seeds for more experimentation next year. I also wanted to try grafting onto Goji rootstocks, as there was a research paper where they successfully grafted Tomatoes onto gojis, and through some kind of dna transfer the Tomato, after being removed from the Goji, gained cold hardiness and became semi-perennial. I wanted to try to replicate this with pepino one day, when i have the time and Space for such experimentation
That one’s probably gonna be the winner, pay special attention to that one & make sure to save seeds if it makes fruits.
I would also take cuttings if that one is the only healthy plant.
YES! Please do so!
Maybe, it seems tzimbalos often get sold as Solanum caripense when the actually species is Solanum canense. It’s so bad that even I got confused, and I study these plants
Here’s the true Tzimbalo Solanum canense. This one has more compound walnut shaped leaves.
If you Tzimbalos have already made true leaves, it would be possible to tell which species you have. Of course they are all cross compatible but help you see if you’ve captured more diversity or not.
I thought so too, but apparently these are actually ripe??? I would imagine the last photo as the more riper color. But then again Green fully ripe tomatoes also exist, it’s not far-fetched for green pepinos to also exist (but these could also be advertised as ripe green Pepino when in reality they are unripe).
Dang… that is frustrating, hopefully the purple skin fruit types get mixed up in your current pepino melons. I don’t think it’s too hard to breed them again as the purple markings seem variable (just keep selecting more purple & less yellow).
I even seen a purple one at my grocery store, however I suspect it’s a problem fruit that hasn’t ripened fully. Usually the white color underneath indicates not fully ripe, when they are deep yellow or almost orangish-yellow is when they taste the best!
I’ve heard rumors about this study but I could never find it. It seems totally possible tho & even if it is just a rumor, it still inspires me to try it! Grafting onto Gogi rootstock is something I want to try, alternatively I was thinking of using Bittersweet nightshades too, I’d imagine they would take better being more closely related than Gogi berries (But it could be the other way around, who knows? - more testing is needed!).
I forgot which book this was from but a friend shared it with me.
So Tomatoes can be made cold hardy by grafting into a cold hardy Black Nightshade species (Solanum mephiticum)? It seems more easier to graft with Gogi Berry, I’ve also heard Tomatoes can even cross with Gogi Berries via Mentor Grafting, Mentor Pollination & Embyro Resque. How true this is I’m not sure but it’s not impossible & grafting would help make a hybrid more likely.
Agreed! I did take some cuttings just to be safe. I still want to nurture the less thriving plants and get them to fruit just for the sake of divsersity. I think there might be a fungal disease or something. I ended up throwing out the pepino in my first post which i thought had weird scales/corking on its skin, after having been able to rub some of it off with a wet qtip, which to me seems to signal a fungal type thing. Anyways since then i see some similar outbreaks in tiny amounts on some of the other pepinos stems.
Here is a blog talking about it and sourcing to it! I think the study is a little unclear on exact procedures, but maybe thats just because i dont have much skills or knowledge on grafting lol
Agreed! I would do the same especially this early at the breeding project. I think it’s worth the extra nurturing effort if it means you can get pass the first goal, seed production.
Wow! so that means you got the more rarer correct species, nice! I assume that now mean you want to find the other true Tzimbalo ( Solanum canense) for additional diversity.
I’m not sure what the yellow spots are but regardless it seems to be growing for now.
Ah good find! Yes this was the from the Gogi grafted Tomato Study. Hopefully we can take these procedures & simplfy them enough so that everyone, even the backyard gardener can do them! I’m still a bit confused & having a hard to time following.
I do know for maximum horizontal gene transfer effect, it’s best to use seedlings as the scion & mature plants as the rootstock (That’s when the effect is more noticable).
Have you tried contacting Whiskey Hill Farms? I believe they used to have a (relatively) large selection of named, unnamed and rare pepino varieties. Only thing is I think they only sell cuttings and not seeds for pepino, at least publicly. Might be worth looking into!
I havent heard of them before! I might have to try to contact them and see if they could provide seeds. I dont think it would be possible to get any cuttings from them as i live in Sweden. Thank you for the tip!
Just had a thought, regarding the study you sent: perhaps its possible to get an ai to read it and come up with ideas to simplify the procedure and clarify steps, just an idea. Im not normally pro-AI but sometimes it can help, as long as you remain sceptical to the results
Flowers are starting to develop on the pepino that is way ahead of the rest. Lets hope it keeps pumping out flowers throughout the season so i have some kind of chance to perform crossing. Interestingly, the flowering seems to have been triggered at the same time as i put the plant from the grow tent with 14h of direct light and a steady temp of around 23-26c to my Windowsill which only gives direct sunlight for about 6-8 hours and has a lower temp of maybe 19c. Interesting
Awesome! That’s the one to pay attention too! Now I don’t remember if the flowers self pollinate or are obligate out-crossers not capable of self pollinating themselves (I need to look into that a bit more - but it wouldn’t hurt shaking or buzzing the flowers with an electric toothbrush since these are indoors where there aren’t insects to pollinate them).
More light triggers plants to flower, this is generally true for most plants especially those that make some kind of fruit so maybe this is why yours started to from flower buds.
If yours continue to flower long enough for your tomato season the flower, it might be worth a short transfering mixed pollen to Pepino flowers & vice versa. Pepino Melons & Tomatoes are closely related with the Solanum supergenus, both in the Solanum subgenus & both in the Potato Superclade. It would be so cool if you tricked the Pepino ovary into accepting Tomato pollen & vice versa by mixing pollens.
Imagine if you pollinate the pepino flowers with both pepino pollen & tomato pollen?
I would also graft them onto tomatoes & vice versa if they live long enough to be present during your tomato season + this would help make the pollen mixing more compatible.
I grew some pepinos from seeds I got out of a grocery store fruit back in 2024 in Texas. The fruit was inedible (assuming it was just way past its prime) so I have also never actually tried the fruit aside from the bit I spit out. I got two plants with vastly different leaves. I read somewhere that they are propagated by cuttings in commercial production and they are self-incompatible so it would make sense that they would have mixed genetics in the seeds.
I just went to Facebook to find pictures and somehow I posted the pictures on there exactly 2 years ago, so Facebook showed me them at the top of my feed as a memory!
