In the markets of many South American countries, pepino is a familiar and mundane fruit, much like potatoes. But in European and Asian countries it is only beginning to gain popularity, and even more so as an exotic gourmet gift or a piquant component in the dishes of famous restaurateurs.
You rarely see such fruit in our stores, but gardening enthusiasts already grow pepino on the windowsills of city apartments, in greenhouses and even in the open ground!
Botanical Description
Pepino is a fruit of the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. In South America (in its homeland) it is a perennial shrub that looks very much like a wild tomato with dark green, strongly dissected leaves. This plant with good care can reach 1.5 meters in height. The root system of pepino is pivotal and very sensitive to insufficient air saturation of the soil.
During flowering, an inflorescence is formed - a brush with a lot of similar to potato flowers. The pepino plant is surprising in that even on one bush, fruits of various colors and shapes can be formed - from conical to almost round. The fruit of this plant is a berry weighing from 50 to 700 g. In its center is a small plane filled with small seeds. Near the peduncle, the surface is slightly depressed. No other fruits can be compared with pepino in color, the photo below confirms this. The color of the ripened fruit can be, depending on the variety, light yellow, and lemon, and cream, with many bright purple longitudinal stripes and specks.
It is no coincidence that they are also called melon pear, since juicy sweet and sour yellow flesh reminds one of the aroma of a pear or melon, with a slight touch of
tropical fruit. Today, breeders have bred new varieties of pepino, the fruit has a smell of mango.
A bit of history
At the beginning of the XX century, during archaeological work in the vicinity of the Peruvian city of Nazca, scientists discovered ritual clay vessels dating from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e., outwardly very similar to the fruits of pepino. This fruit, apparently, was not only famous, but also cultivated by the ancient Incas.
In Europe, Andre Thuen, gardener of the Royal Garden in Paris, brought the melon pear to Europe in 1785. The British explorer William Ayton in 1789 described and gave him the specific name Solanum muricatum Ait. A hundred years later, pepino came to Russia and already in 1890 was shown at the St. Petersburg All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition. The Russian emperor Alexander III, who visited the exposition, appreciated the unusual culture and ordered the issuance of a decree - to send pepino seeds to greenhouses. So this exotic plant was quite successfully cultivated until the October Revolution of 1917. Then, for almost a century, the melon pear almost disappeared, as it was cultivated in only a few greenhouses as an exhibit of botanical collections.
Both tasty and healthy.
Pepino contains many different minerals, trace elements, pectin, organic acids and fiber. Due to the presence of potassium, the fruit is an excellent preventive measure for diseases affecting the cardiovascular system. The presence in the melon pear of a sufficient amount of easily digestible iodine allows its use in diseases of the thyroid gland. Pepino pulp has low acidity and high fiber content - it is useful for people with various digestive problems. The skin of this fruit contains anthocyanins with anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and anti-cancer properties.
Culinary application
Ripe pepinos are quite large fruits, photos of which you can see below. They are widely used in cooking.
It is worth remembering that overripe fruits lose their gustatory quality, but fresh, with intact dense skin, can be stored in the refrigerator for about a month. Unripe pepinos are stored even longer, but only their taste is worse.
In the countries of South America, as well as in Japan, melon pear is usually eaten fresh as a dessert. Before consumption, the skin is carefully removed from this fruit and seeds are extracted from the core of the fruit.
In New Zealand, pepino pulp is added to fish and meat dishes, soups, sauces and various desserts, and used as a filling in baked goods. In addition, the fruits of melon pears can be preserved, frozen, dried and boiled in them stewed fruit, jam and jams. Unripe pepino berries are pickled in the same way as ordinary cucumbers, and they make various canned vegetable salads from them.
How to grow in our conditions?
Our gardeners, learning about the many useful properties of this plant, often wonder about how to grow pepino with us. The most successful and adapted to our conditions varieties are considered Ramses and Consuelo.
A melon pear is grown through seedlings. Sowing of seeds is carried out from late January or early February into a moistened soil mixture for tomatoes, sprinkled on the surface and slightly sprinkled with soil. Then cover the crops with glass or film. After shoots appear, they are thinned out, leaving the strongest. When the seedlings grow to 15-20 cm, pinch them, and after the appearance of lateral shoots, they are transplanted into a container with a large volume. After the spring return frosts pass, pepino seedlings are transplanted into the greenhouse, continuing to care for it, like ordinary tomatoes. This culture does not like heat very much, the optimum temperature for it is from +15 to +30 with air humidity of about 75%.
Cuttings
In addition to seed propagation, pepino can be propagated by cuttings. To do this, you must have a uterine plant wintering in an insulated cellar or on a loggia. Starting in mid-February, you can cuttings, cutting off the top of the shoot with seven leaves. Be sure to remove the two lower sheets, and the remaining ones are shortened by half to reduce evaporation. If uterine bushes are few, then you can get cuttings from the bottom of the shoot, leaving five internodes.