STILL REAPING A HARVEST IN MID-NOVEMBER

Picking our last Kiwanos for the year!

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One of the biggest things that I have appreciate moving farther south from Wisconsin all the way down into the Ozarks is that I have a longer growing season. Along with the many other things that we considered when we moved our family was the longer growing season. Many of the plants that we could grow up north we can still grow here, plus many other ones.

Upon moving down here, we soon began to appreciate the hotter climate and the longer growing season, and even began experimenting with plants that we had never even heard of before or ever previously considered. The Kiwano is one such plant.

KIWANOS STILL HIDING IN THE GARDEN

This year we have already had two hard frosts and the vast majority of our garden plants have perished, including our Kiwano vines. However, hidden beneath the dried leaves and vines of the Kiwano plants were still some mature fruit that were protected from the frost. With so many things always going on, it is hard to cross every chore off of your list at the appropriate time, so opportunities like this are a blessing.

We had already enjoyed picking some of these Kiwano melons earlier in the year, and simply never made it out to collect the rest. However, near the end of last week @papa-pepper took his oldest son "Monster Truck the Pepper" out to finish the job.

Unfortunately some had already been partially eaten by animals and others had gotten soft from the frost. At least these can still be used as chicken and pig feed right now, so they weren't completely wasted.

When these melons get completely ripe, they turn a fantastic yellowish-orange color, but the large green ones can still be plucked and allowed to finish maturing. Originally, we had found these for sale at a local organic health food store. The sign in front of them mentioned that they were "locally grown."

That was enough information for me to want to give them a try. Inside of these "jelly melons" are a ton of mature seeds. All we did was save some and try planting them the next year. Sure enough, they sprouted just fine and provided us with a wonderful harvest last year. That was our first year growing them, so we again saved the seeds and grew them again this year.

In fact, this year the majority of Kiwano vines that were growing in our garden were "volunteers." These plants had reseeded themselves from the seeds provided by missed fruit last year, and chose to come back this year to bless us. I love it when things like that happen!

A WORD OF WARNING

The Kiwano is a very interesting and delicious food indeed, but the vine is a real beast. These vines can grow up to 100 feet long and produce as many as 100 Kiwanos per vine. If you ever consider growing them, be sure to give them lots of room.

Moreover, the dried vines are covered in a stiff "hair" that can be rather itchy when brushed up against with your skin. Is this enough of a reason for @papa-pepper to stop growing Kiwanos? No, not even close, I just wanted to warn you.

In total, we found another twenty Kiwanos hiding in the garden. As strange as it was for us to still be harvesting from an outdoor garden in the middle of November, it was even stranger that we were harvesting a peculiar horned melon known as the Kiwano, which is originally from Africa.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-kiwano

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Until next time…

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GIF provided by @malos10

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