Melothria scabra
Mexican minich cucumber
Common names: Mexican mini melon, Cucamelon
At a glance
- Light
- Full sun
- Spacing
- 40 cm, rows 60 cm
- Lifespan
- Annual
- Sowing
- Mar–Apr
- Harvest
- Jul–Sep
- Hardiness
- Cold damage below 2 °C
- Water need
- Medium
- For children
- Well suited
Photo: User:Tigerente · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
This description was machine-translated.
Description
The Mexican minich cucumber bears thumb-sized fruit that look like tiny watermelons and taste fresh-sour like cucumber with a splash of lime. The delicate, trailing plant is sturdy, resilient, and eye-catching on any trellis.
Care instructions
Sow in March in warm conditions and plant seedlings after the last frost in mid-May in a sunny, wind-protected spot with trellis support. Keep the soil evenly moist and give a handful of compost once. Harvest the firm, crunchy fruit from July onward while they are about grape-sized; if overripe they become mealy.
The care notes were machine-translated from German.
Garden year
SowingMar–Apr
HarvestJul–Sep
Germination
- Soil temperature
- from 15 °C, ideally 26 °C
- Days to sprout
- 10 to 21 days
- Light
- Sprouts in light or dark
- Sowing depth
- 1 cm
- How to start
- Start indoors, then plant out
Soil & site
Soil pH
Soil type
humus-rich, loamy, well-drained, nutrient-rich
Give it loose, humus-rich, well-drained soil without waterlogging. Work heavy, compacted soil over with compost beforehand. Keep the soil evenly moist rather than wet: too much water makes the plant more susceptible.
Cucurbits (cucumber, pumpkin, courgette) are heavy feeders. Give them plenty of compost and about 4 years' break on the same bed.
Feeding
Heavy feeder
Months
Apr–Aug
In spring before planting out, work plenty of compost or well-rotted manure shallowly into the soil. As a heavy feeder, it welcomes regular organic top-ups from the fruiting phase (June to August), for example with nettle liquid feed or another dose of compost.
Overwintering
The Mexican sour gherkin is not hardy and dies back above ground at the first frost. The easiest approach is to sow it anew every year. Alternatively, after the first frosts, carefully dig up the small storage tubers (do not pull on the plant, as damaged tubers will not shoot) and overwinter them like dahlia tubers in slightly moist sand, cool and frost-free in a dark place. The tubers must stay slightly moist, otherwise they dry out; start them off from April and set them outdoors after the Ice Saints.
Propagation
Methods
- From seed
- Cuttings
- Offsets
The most reliable way to propagate the Mexican sour gherkin is from seed. Soak the seeds in lukewarm water for about 24 hours and, from the end of March to mid-April, set them singly about 1 cm deep in small pots with loose seed compost. At 20 to 25 °C in a bright spot, it germinates after one to three weeks. Put two seeds in each pot straight away and remove the weaker seedling; that way you save yourself the pricking out. You can plant out from mid-May at the earliest, after the Ice Saints, when frosty nights are no longer a threat. The species is open-pollinated, so the seedlings come true to type.
It can also be propagated vegetatively via its fleshy storage tubers; this gives you a strong head start in spring. Important: the tuber is NOT divided like a dahlia, but overwintered whole and replanted whole. In autumn, leave the plant standing until the first frost has killed the foliage, then dig the tuber up carefully. Cut off the withered foliage and bed the tuber loosely in slightly moist sand. Store it cool (about 5 to 8 °C), dark and frost-free; keep the sand only very slightly moist so the tuber neither dries out nor rots. Lay several tubers so that they do not touch each other. From April, pot up the whole tuber about 2 to 3 cm deep in seed compost and put it somewhere bright and warm; after the Ice Saints it can go into the bed. The tuber shoots much earlier than a seedling and gets bigger and more productive year after year.
It is quicker in summer with cuttings: cut off a strong, non-flowering shoot a good 10 to 15 cm long just below a leaf node, remove the lower leaves and stand it in a glass of water or insert it in moist seed compost so that at least one leaf node is covered. Keep it warm and evenly moist; roots form after one to two weeks, and you can pot up the cutting.
Companion planting
Good neighbors
legume family (Fabaceae)
Beans and peas enrich the soil with nitrogen, which cucurbits, as heavy feeders, can make good use of.
For example PeaBush beanPole beanBroad beanSnow peaWrinkled pea and 36 more species in the catalogue
Source: classic companion planting (DACH-Gartenpraxis)
Rather not
nightshade family (Solanaceae)
You should avoid planting potato and cucumber together because they share disease pathogens such as leaf and brown rot and stand in each other's way as strong feeders.
For example PotatoTomatoSweet pepperCocktail tomatoEggplantCape gooseberry and 14 more species in the catalogue
Source: basic crop-rotation rule
Companion planting is partly traditional gardening lore. Where the reason is known, it is given.
Some of these explanations were machine-translated.
For your garden
Grow Mexican minich cucumber yourself
Gartenkern tells you when frost is coming, when to sow and when to harvest, for your location.
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