This year we are growing African jelly melon for the first time in our gardens.

Wendy shares her experience with growing African jelly melon in a recent comment:

I saw on recent videos that you were trying the Kiwano AKA African horned cucumber AKA jelly melon in your garden this year. 

I tried Kiwano for the first time about 4 growing seasons ago. I have found that they do not require their own growing spot and are fantastic to grow under other plants if you are pressed for space in your garden area. For me, they have happily grown under and in competition with my Curcubita moschata mixed variety/landrace for 3 years now.

The first year I gave them their own space. It was the second year that a couple of self seeded plants came up under my butternut/mixed cross pumpkin plants, and I noticed that the kiwano plants produced prolifically in spite of the competition.

I deliberately planted them near the pumpkin the third year and again, the kiwano successfully produced many fruit without being given any consideration of space or nutrition.

About 3 weeks ago I harvested season 4 – a couple of plants had got under the mandarine tree and I had fruit growing up in the tree amongst the mandarines (as well as under the pumpkins where I had deliberately planted them). I have more fruit now than I think I can possibly eat in the next 6 months and all without giving them their own space or any attention at all.

Additionally, I find the kiwano to be amazing for storage, which is why I first grew them. I had read, I think Carol Deppe was the author, that they kept perhaps 8 months (if I recall correctly) without special efforts at storage. I have found that to be true. I can, without any special preservation method but simply separating the fruit in flat boxes so they don’t pierce each other, keep the kiwano for eating over winter and spring until only a couple of weeks before the next regular cucumber is expected from the summer garden. I do find that most of the kiwano fruit is produced in autumn, so continue to plan to eat regular cucumbers from early summer through to early autumn.

To eat, I peel the younger green ones with a paring knife and slice to put in salads. They taste very similar to regular cucumber eaten that way. When they get a bit older and the flesh starts to get a yellow hue, I found that at that stage I don’t enjoy eating the flesh around the seeds, so at that stage I scoop the flesh out with a spoon and avoid the firmer yellowing parts.

I hope you will add them to your survival plant profiles. I can safely say that they are now a keeper in my garden.

I am in a somewhat drier climate I think than you, with wet cool winters and hot dry summers. However the Kiwanos have done well even in the recent wetter than average years for me. I hope you have similar success.

Ours are already running like crazy. I planted 5-8 or so, here and there. A couple of them are in compost piles with pumpkins, and others are on their own in either mulch or right in the ground in the food forest.

Papa Pepper on YouTuber warns that they are super vigorous and shares how his look in the garden:

Whelp, I didn’t plan for all that, so it’s gonna be fun to watch them eat trees, shrubs and the grass in the food forest.

One has already almost completely covered my sole goumi berry bush in the food forest, so I think I’m going to have to prune the vines back so it doesn’t kill the poor thing.

Another one is becoming a quite aggressive ground cover beneath a mulberry.

If they run 100′ and produce a hundred melons each, we’re going to be swimming in them by fall! I hope we like eating them. If not, I’ll feed them to a pig and turn them into bacon.

Perhaps we can use some of them early to make pickles when our cucumbers run out in a month or two.

They may also make an appearance in Daisy’s seed store if they work well in this climate and seem to be useful enough to keep.

It’s fun testing new crops. We’ve found some very interesting new additions to our “easy to grow” list via trying plants and seeing how they do in our climate. Add a few new things every year and see how they do. You might discover something amazing you can add to your regular growing rotation! Minimalist Gardening for the win.

Also, if you want the inside track on creating food forests and would like to ask questions and learn from other gardeners, please join us at the new Skool Survival Gardening group.

*Image of jelly melon via Tijana Drndarski (Pexels) / (Instagram).