C.Melo grex.
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Ooooh, melon ice cream.
That sounds like a legitimately delicious melon! If it’s tasty unripe as well, that’s a great find.
I have this cucumber anguria too which taste good as mature fruits, slightly acidic and less sweet than zambianus
The leaf looks like cucumis zambianus but smaller
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I’ve mostly eaten mature cucumbers this season. The students at the culinary school I work at tend to pick the unripe ones and let the ripe one stay on the vine. I use the ripe ones for seed and eat the flesh. Many of them think ‘something has gone wrong’ when they see those yellow, orange and brown fruits. They’ve never seen a ripe cucumber before. They wonder if it is diseased. I tell them they’re used to eating unripe cucumber fruit. Many of the ripe cucumbers are delicious to me. We try to eat them together. Sometimes one comes along that is way to dry and not interesting. This happened one time and the students were not impressed (me neither). Second time we tried, it was very juicy and slightly acidic, the texture tending towards melon-like. The rind on the ones I grew this year is thicker than most slicing cucumbers, but often I don’t mind. I think the cucumbers that did best were my own seed, that should be a mix of European pickling cucumbers and the Indian Poona Kheera-type. They at least turn brown and look like sweet potatoes almost.
One student came to tell me he fried the cucumbers and I tried to do that too with ripe fruit and I really liked that. I think it’s my favorite way to eat cucumbers. Next year I would like to grill cucumbers to make them smoky too and get those nice char grill marks you get on zucchini. I believe it is pretty common in India and southeast Asia. I just didn’t know about it before.
Posted some images here: malterod shared a post
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That sounds promising! Thank you for the tip!
Tangential, my grow out of Kherson Market Melon last year included one plant that threw what we started calling “cucumber melons” that sound like the exact flavor you’re looking for. I saved the seed separately (I didn’t make any attempts to prevent cross pollination from a painted serpent melon) and submitted it to the cucumber steward with notes.
Could it be a Snapmelon (Cucumis melo var. mormordica) [ Snapmelon Cultivar Group ]. Also melon icecream!? YO SAVE THOSE SEEDS!!! That’s a lucky find indeed cuz most snapmelons are sweetless. Also that texture of the Melon, it looks fluffy, did it taste fluffy?
Wait! Sweetness actually exists outside of Cucumis melo!? I never thought that was possible, you blew my mind! Was there any bitterness along with the sweetness? Also do the seeds add a nice crunch? and could Cucumis ambianus be landraced to eventually become sweet enough like a true muskmelon?
By acidic, do you mean sour without a hint of bitterness? also could Cucumis anguria cross with cucumis zambianus? They both appear to be Photogenically Similar perhaps in the same subgenus (What I call the anguria group cuz no researcher I know of proposed a name). Have you also tried eating the greens of both species? are they worth it (Even the most tenderest of Young Leaves, or only when cooked)?
Also for Cucumis anguria what is the ripe fruit color (Like in terms of when saving seeds and does it taste any sweeter being more ripe)? Speaking of which how Ripe does Cucumis zambianus have to be in order to be sweet? I’m clarifying because a lot of Cucumis spp. fruits are eaten unripe like cucumbers.
Are you referring to specifically Cucumis sativus? Does it ever get ripe of enough to taste sweet? Juicy & acidic eh? in what ways are they different from unripe counter-parts (Besides Melon like Texture)? Is there more Developed flavor or no? Also when fully ripe does all Cucurbitacin bitterness go away? If so are ripe Cucumbers the way we should be eating them (like in terms of having the most nutrients)?
Yes, C. sativus. I wouldn’t say they taste sweeter to me. But more aromatic and acidic, slightly melon-like is the closest I can describe it.
Do you think it’s possible to turn cucumber into another Melon? In other words, can we breed a Cucumber till it’s sweet like melons?
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Have you tried with white pickling cucumbers? They become yellowy and the overripe fruit was very juicy and nice for me. The green ones that become yellow were very dry, it remember to me to unripe or dry melon.
I will try frying them for sure next season.
These are some of my ripen white pickling cucumbers from last year.
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I had a few of those last season, but not enough to really get to know them. A gardener-cook I trust a lot here says the white ones can be really delicious. I’d like to know more about them.
I’d love to have cucumbers that turn into melons when ripe. That would be so cool.
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I’ve seen this post and not quite sure if I should speak up. Growing them out this year again to make sure… but …Yes. The everything Cucumber mix grex totally yielded fruit that was still firm and tasted delicious. I only kept seed from the ones that fit that criteria. A little less than a half ounce is the final weight of seed I have for next season. I was going to send them in but thought I’d give it one more season here to see if I could replicate the result and multiply the seed stock since they’ve been locally adapted a bit
A local seed swap on February 4th. I’m going to see if anyone would like to grow some. The rest I plan on growing out here, the community garden, and finding a couple other gardeners locally who’d dig on cucumbers and could save a couple for me.
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Ooooh. That’s delightful to hear. If you were able to find plenty of tasty ripe fruit from a grex, that implies it’s a common enough trait in the species to make a great landrace.
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16 posts were split to a new topic: Cucumber Landraces-- Xishuangbanna Orange Fleshed and Sikkim