GREAT Achocha Relish/Pickle

I have found an incredible way to use up these achocha fruits.

 A few weeks back I posted about trying to make achocha jam. Which was tasty but still not quite what we were after when trying to find something t do with them (and had a weird consistency). 

Sweet Achocha Jam - The Weirdest Jam I've ever made!

So I grow a lot of weird and wonderful fruit and veggies, trying out different ones each year. 

One that we keep growing is achocha. Now I'm not saying I plant it every year, it's just the plant that keeps coming back!

The Wonderful Achocha?

I've done my talk on unusual veg quite few times now ( a few dozen!), it's a really popular one and one I love doing. I just love talking about all these unusual foods that my kids think are normal yet people have never heard of. In fact I love it so much that I've put together a second talk on the subject and garden clubs seem keen to have me back with that one as well! 

One thing I do get a lot from it is often people telling me they've grown something from the list and didn't like. Normally it's Achochas or Cucamelons. 

Each time I have the same answer -

More Planting Through Plastic

Down at the bottom of the garden, there's a surprise waiting for you. 

It's called weeds! 

Not quite ground force but we can get a lot done between us! 

The veg garden is looking pretty good at the moment but where the 16 beds ends it turns, rather abruptly, into a jungle of weeds. It's not something I'm proud of and it's certainly on my list of things to do! 

On Sunday the girls and I decided to tackle a very small part of it. We dug out a strip for a new bed. Pulling out all the nettle and reed roots that had taken hold and made a big pile of them. This took some time, and for the girls a complete change of clothes - well it was rather muddy! Fair play to them though they stayed for ages and worked hard, we frequently had to stop and look at worms and bugs, but I didn't mind that!  

Singing was optional! 

I've decided to make these beds narrow than my others. The main garden has beds divided into 4ft strips, the idea being that you can reach the middle from both sides. The trouble with this is you find yourself stretching all the time. Narrowing the bed down to about 30" means I can reach to the other side crouched on one side of the path. 

 I laid the slabs on the bare earth so I now had a new 10ft by 30" bed marked out, with hopefully most of the perennial weeds removed. I then added a couple wheel barrow loads of well rotted sheep muck and mixed it in before covering the whole thing with weed membrane.

A few nights later ( a dry few minutes) I got the blow torch out again (like I did here) and burnt in holes for plant to be planted. 

It's a bit of a mixed bed with some plants I'm experimenting with. 

In it is some Vietnamese  coriander, (which I bough again at Hellens Festival at the weekend as my other didn't make it through winter or go to seed last year), some quillqina (a mexican herb I'm trying to grow), some Peruvian Black mint (another herb I'm experimenting with), a giant Achocha (just to see how it does out of the greenhouse - this will need some support though!) and four chilli pepper plants (just to see how they perform outside as well. 

Hopefully planting them in this way will give me some low effort herbs and flavourings, whilst keeping the weeds at bay and reclaiming some more of the veg garden. 

I've started on another bed below this one last night in which I intend to plant my chickpeas in much the same way. I then think the area below that I will just cover over to suppress the weeds for a few months then sow a green manure for over the winter. 

Anyone else growing though plastic? Anyone else have much luck with growing things that are traditionally greenhouse crops outside in a UK type climate, like chilli's?

Growing From Mouldy Seed

I'm always amazed by seeds, as I'm sure many of you are. all that potential saved up in that little package. 

Last year I saved some Fat Baby Achocha seeds (a type of exploding cucumbers), although they weren't an incredible veg they were still interesting and tasty enough to be worth growing again at some point. 

Mouldy seeds

I saved the seed in an old medicine bottle once I'd dried them and just to make sure I added some rice to absorb any moisture left in them. 

I obviously got it wrong somewhere down the line and when I came to use them a few weeks ago they were mouldy, you could smell the mould on them before you could see it. I really didn't fancy spending out again on these seeds so I thought I'd just sow them anyway, mould and all, and see what happened.

Seeds germinating

I sowed them thickly, left them a week or so in the greenhouse and ended up with a pretty much 100% germination rate! I really didn't think they would germinate, so I'm pretty pleased.

Grown on for a few days

A ripe fruit from last summer.

I'll make sure I'll grow a few plants this year from my seedlings and I'll save a new batch of seeds, picking out the best fruit to save from. This time I'll make sure they're 100% dry before I store them. 

How does everyone else dry their seeds for seed Saving? 

Is there a way that you can check how dry they are before storing them?

Fat Baby Achocha

Lots and lots of veg is ready at the moment. We had a massive dinner last night with lots of veg from the garden but there's lots of unusual stuff coming ready now as well. 

These Fat Baby Achocha's are just ready now in the greenhouse (with more nearly ready outside). They're a weird veg covered in little spines, but they're soft to the touch.

When you eat them they taste a little like a cucumber and I've read that you can cook and use them like a green pepper, although I'm yet to try that. They grow really well, and although they've taken a little bit of time to start fruiting I think a bit of that is down to the year we're having. They grow much like a cucamelon with a thin climbing vine that spreads everywhere given half a chance. 

The girls seem to like them and my youngest, who is just getting good at stringing words together to make sentences said:  "Good... With biscuit." when she tried one. I think I'll keep it firmly in the savoury camp for now! 

Who else has eaten this unusual veg? Does anyone have any tips for using it?