When you plant your first garden you usually limit yourself to the things that are easy for growing in a vegetable garden. Stuff that’s pretty common.
Things like tomatoes and radishes and money.
But as time goes by and you get confident in your gardening skills you start to branch out into things that are little less common. Things like quinoa and tomatillos and credit cards.
Last year the strange thing I grew was Mouse Melon. A tiny little thing that looks just like a mouse sized watermelon and tastes like a slightly pickled cucumber. Great for stir fries and salads. Or just popping in your mouth as you wander through the garden picking your credit cards.
I’ve been so busy this year that I didn’t really give any thought to the strange thing I was going to grow. What with the kitchen renovation, the only strange thing I was focused on growing was my bank account.
Then last week I went to the mailbox and pulled out an envelope from Linda Craago of Tree & Twig. I ripped it open to find my strange thing. She had sent me a packet of Horned Melon seeds. Otherwise known as the Jelly Melon. (you can buy your own here)
photo via SeriousEats
The Horned Melon originated in Africa near the Kalahari desert. The outside is green and horned, turning orange when it’s ripe.
The inside is filled with a chartreuse green jelly that tastes like cucumber at first then blends into an exotic fruit flavour.
But I don’t care what it tastes like. LOOK at it.
Photo via Fruit Facts
It grows like a vine that you can trellis so it doesn’t take up a ton of space, unless you devote all of your vertical space to growing 24K gold. So that’s good. It’s the sort of thing you may just grow once to see what it’s like for the fun of it. And I really can’t imagine what would be more fun than having a big bowl of these on the kitchen table when people came over.
It’ll look great beside my big bowl of home grown winning lottery tickets.
