[gorbelly]

Just a report on the sanditas/mouse melons/Mexican sour gherkins for posterity and for other poor souls like me scouring the Internet for more detailed information. I pulled my plants this past weekend. I should add that the vines probably could have gone longer, but I needed the space for fall cover crop.

PLANT GROWTH: The vines were way too vigorous for the trellis I had prepared for them. Just one plant completely overran it and became a giant tangled mess and went up my papalo plant (which luckily got to be over 7 feet tall). I had planted 3, but in the end was really only left with one. That single plant became a bit of a jungle.

PRODUCTION: Good in terms of numbers of fruit. Tons and tons of these little fruits set like crazy. Not great in terms of total fruit mass, but that's expected for small little fruits. You're not going to satisfy a family's cucumber needs with this variety, but it would be a good "fun extra" if you have some space to fill.

DISEASE: Two plants died early of a sudden wilt of some kind. I couldn't identify it. Despite heavy powdery mildew on some nearby squash, the sanditas seemed to resist it well. No early pests, but when the cucumber beetles did eventually come, they did enjoy the sanditas. There were signs of bacterial wilt, but unlike the plants that died suddenly early on, the one surviving plant, which was already pretty large by then, seemed fairly resistant. Individual leaves and stretches of vine would wilt and die, but it didn't take down the entire vine. I'm wondering whether there's genetic variability in resistance--probably should have saved seed from that surviving plant, come to think of it. Oh well.

FLAVOR/CULINARY: The tart crunch is refreshing, but the skins are very thick, and the inside has no flesh to speak of--it's all seed matrix. People I shared them with oohed and aahed over them at first but didn't exactly clamor for more. Kids did enjoy them, though, for sheer cuteness. They were not my favorite, honestly. They were just OK. I did whip up a quart of refrigerator pickles with the fruit I picked off the vine when I pulled it, and I do have to say the pickles are GREAT. It would be hard to grow enough in my garden to have enough at a time to pickle, though, since they're such trellis hogs.

BOTTOM LINE: I'm going to hold on to some of my extra seed in case I want to bring them back in future, but this isn't exactly a "must-grow", IMO. Maybe a "should-try"? They are certainly fun, but not revelatory or anything.