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Post by pepperhead212 on Jun 30, 2016 22:47:15 GMT -5
This year I am growing bitter melon (Shanghai variety) and Indian Gherkins. Has anybody here grown these before? Both of these are growing on what look like mutated vines in a sci-fi movie! I lost count of how many off shoots there are on both, but I have never seen anything like them. The bitter melon looks like a miniature full sized one, even at less than an inch long. The gherkin looks like an elongated ball of spines. The photo of the gherkin isn't very good, but they are growing fast, so I'll have more soon. Bitter Melon: Here's the first gherkin I found. I took the photo yesterday, and the gherkin has more than tripled in size: Here's a photo of the lower part of the gherkin plant, showing all of the vines growing off of the main vine. And this is just the lower right part of the plant - there are many vines that I have already trained onto the trellis, and one is 4' over to the right!
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Post by daylilydude on Aug 7, 2016 12:30:29 GMT -5
Gotta ask pepperhead212, what does this bitter melon taste like, and how do you use it?
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Post by pepperhead212 on Aug 7, 2016 23:27:18 GMT -5
It's hard to describe the flavor - like today, when a friend asked me what okra tastes like! Besides the bitter flavor, it's sort of like some sort of squash, and it's all what you cook it with, like anything. Though it is often cooked by itself, with seasonings, it is usually put into Indian curries, though I put a couple into a Thai curry, and it was delicious. In fact, I just diced one up today, and cooked it in a creole type stew I made, with some eggplant, okra, Big Jim peppers, and a bunch of those tomatoes from the garden. I only threw that in to use it up - it really didn't add much, but it was the only one, and I found out that they don't like heat - that horrible heat wave we had in the high 90s stopped the one plant from flowering, after I had gotten nearly 30 fruits from it so far! The flowers came back this week, so it will recover. Here is a more recent photo, showing a one day harvest: I forgot to mention that this variety is much less bitter than those I have gotten in Indian markets a couple of times. And here are those gherkins, about 2-2 1/4" long, which I have found make delicious pickles - the crispiest I have ever had! I was harvesting a dozen or more a day, probably getting close to a hundred, but they also don't like heat, I found out, as they also stopped abruptly in that heat.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Aug 11, 2016 12:16:39 GMT -5
Hope your gherkins recover! Those are not the same as Mexican Sour Gherkins, right? They look bigger.
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