Beginner Gardening: The cuke that wasn't., 1 by gardenwife

gardenwife wrote:
This spring, Horseshoe sent me several veggie plants in the mail. In with the peppers and tomatoes were a couple of cucumber plants. One was a bush cuke and the other, unlabeled, he said was a lemon cuke.

I've battled powdery mildew on my poor cukes, spraying them carefully with baking soda and dish soap dissolved in water, as suggested. We got two cukes from the bush cuke plant, but all its leaves are turned to dust and I don't hold much hope for the tiny other fruit to develop any further.

The lemon cuke seemed to be doing great despite the powdery leaves. It started forming fruit and I was so excited! He said they'd be ripe when they turned yellow.

They keep growing, but not fading to yellow. As a matter of fact, they look like little watermelons...

So, I wrote to Shoe and he told me this:

Hah! Nope, not a cuke! If that is about the size of a tennis ball or so it is a "plumgranny"!...A plumgranny (a.k.a. "Queen Anne's pocket melon") is not a very edible veggie...they were used in the bygone days when people didn't bathe so much and were carried in people's folds in their robes/pockets to mask their body odor.

Let it get a tan color before you pick it (or let it get "overly ripe")...it has a great smell and you'll see why those folks used it for said purpose!

So, not only have I been babying this plant under the assumption I could actually eat its fruit, but now he tells me we stink!

LOL!! Just kiddin' Shoe. It is pretty funny, though. I knew those couldn't be cukes!

This message was edited Aug 8, 2005 10:16 PM