Kiwano - African Horned Melon. Growing & Tasting

Hey everyone, welcome to the greenhouse. This is the first time I've taken you in here. And at the moment it is a crazy jungle. So this plant over here is actually a kiwano. I have three kiwanos planted in the garden just over there in the greenhouse. And it's just literally gone crazy. A couple of weekends ago it was like this as well and I cut it right back to almost nothing and it's just gone mad again. Believe it or not, under here there's actually a wooden shelf system and there's pot plants all over it. See there's a prickly pear growing in a pot, a pomegranate, a dragon fruit. You know there's all these plants and they're literally just getting all smothered from this kiwano vine which is growing like a jungle. It's crazy. I can't even actually show you the pot plants under there because it's pretty much impenetrable. But all under here, yeah there's a whole shelf system with pot plants all on it. So anyway what I'm going to have to do is cut this right back again. But I actually haven't got any flowers or any fruit off it yet so at the moment it's pretty useless. But look there's a path down here you can't even see it. There's a path that goes right through almost to the end and it's just overgrowing. But yeah as I said it hasn't flowered yet so if anyone knows why. Oh hang on a minute there's something I haven't actually seen. There's actually baby kiwanos growing in there. Hang on let me zoom in. So what you're looking at right there is a baby kiwano. So I'm real stoked about this because I haven't actually checked this plant for a while and I didn't realize it was fruiting and flowering. So over here is another flower. Another one just there. Tons more flowers forming so looks like I'm going to have a good crop of kiwanos. And it's a good thing that it looks like it's all flowering on the growth where I want it to be growing. So hang on just let me zoom out again. So yeah it's fruiting on all of the stuff where I want it to be and all of the new growth. It doesn't look like it's going to be fruiting on just yet so I will be able to go and cut all of this jungle area back. So all of this piece it's only supposed to grow to about here. And so I'm going to cut all of this off because under here as I said is a large wooden shelf area with all my pot plants on it. So yeah that is my kiwano and it looks like I'll be able to update you at some point with a video to show you when the fruit are ripe or when they're getting bigger. So I'm really excited about that. I have never grown these before so this is my very first time and so far it's working out excellent. The screen house is obviously just making it grow crazy. But yeah it turns out it's going to be a good crop so fingers crossed that it all works out. Anyway let me go show you something else very cool that I've just found. Okay so this is a kiwano fruit and I just got back from the fruit shop and I managed to have a lucky find and I found one of these in there. It was about $2.99 which is kind of expensive for a fruit of this size. However it's not something that you would see very often so I mean you know it's not too bad really. As you can see it's sort of got quite sharp little spikes all over it with white tips and those little ends are pretty sharp and you wouldn't want to grasp onto this thing too hard. But you might notice like the top of it is sort of quite yellow and orange on the top and then if you turn it over on the bottom it's sort of a lighter color which is sort of like a watermelon I suppose. The area that would be sitting on the soil out of the sunlight doesn't turn as dark as the top would. But anyway enough of me talking let's cut into this thing and give it a try. Look at that for a color. It's bright green. Doesn't that look cool? I reckon. It's got seeds just like cucumber and I have seen the seeds before because obviously I have grown them as I showed you before. But yeah those are what the seeds look like and each one is in a little sort of jelly pod kind of like kind of like a passion fruit if you've had those before. But yeah anyway I'm going to grab a spoon and give it a taste. I really don't know what I'm doing here but I'm just going to take a scoop of it because I figure that's probably the easiest way. So it kind of just yeah separates into each seed has its own little section. All right let me give it a taste. Interesting. Hang on I'll give it another try. Then I'll try and work out what I think it tastes like. I don't know it's kind of weird. I guess the only thing I can really compare it to is cucumber. Yeah it just tastes quite like cucumber and that's pretty much all that I can think of. Although it doesn't taste exactly like cucumber it has a slightly different taste as well. Almost a slight banana-y taste to it like cucumber mixed with banana. I don't know yeah it's kind of strange but yeah it's not bad. It's not really like something really fruity it's more vegetably than anything. But I don't mind it it's kind of I guess you could say it's kind of refreshing to eat in the summer because it's kind of you know watery and and that but no it's it's not too bad. I'm not going to rush out and buy a dozen more or anything. This is probably the only one I'll buy and then if my own fruits then sweet as I'll eat them otherwise yeah I'll leave it at just this one. Yeah definitely tastes a little bit like banana actually now that I have a bit more. So banana mixed with cucumber if you can kind of imagine that. But if you can find them definitely give it a try. It's something a little bit different so yeah you may as well be a bit adventurous. Anyway thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video. All righty, see ya.