Horny cucumbers

Sorry if your google search has turned up the wrong sort of website. This is a gardening blog, full of wholesome ingredients such as.....

the African horned cucumber

I have grown these things for years - or rather they grew themselves after i planted them for the first time. They are no ordinary cucumber and have a particular timeframe when flowering and fruiting.

They will only fruit after mid summer and in declining daylight hours , so here that means march and april and they go on to ripen into winter. I have had a bucket of them sitting around waiting for seedsaving and decided to do it on this drizzly day.

This involves scraping out all of the pulp and seeds and putting it into a large container (as i had a large number of cucumbers). By the time i finished i had nearly filled this container with green frothy goo, which will now sit and ferment for over a week. This will break down the gelatinous layer around the seed , and when washed after a week of fermenting the seeds will come clean. They are then dried.

 This technique can be used for all cucumbers as well as tomatoes. you may have to add a little water to the mix if it is not liquidy enough.

These cucumbers give you a glut of fruit late in the year. I prefer to pick them while still quite green and when the seeds are small or poorly formed and eat them like cucumber - peeled. Today my kids were eating the contents out of the ripened fruits and it was slightly sweet. They are however bullet proof in regards to all hot weather conditions and all sorts of pests, as long as they have water.

Speaking of weather it has rained again over the weekend and in the evening today the coulds seemed to descend to near ground level. I thought you only got fog in the morning and i don't remember even seeing fog here before.

Went to a pruning workshop this afternoon which was very informative. I learned that different types of grape vines need different types of pruning - spur and cane. That was the biggest discovery for me anyway. I look forward to doing a bit of pruning in the near future.