Gadenin日本語Get the appYou are picking an unripe fruit
Almost everything else in the garden is picked when it is ripe. Bitter melon is the exception: the fruit you want to eat is deliberately immature, firm and green, taken well before the plant considers it finished. Ripeness in this plant is a seed dispersal event, not a culinary one.
Left on the vine, a green fruit begins to pale at the blossom end, turns yellow, then a strong orange over about a week. At that point it splits open along three longitudinal seams, curls back, and exposes seeds wrapped in a bright red sticky coat. The flesh by then is soft, spongy and mealy, and the fruit is finished as a vegetable. The red seed coat is sweet and is edible, which surprises people, but the fruit itself is gone.
One fruit allowed to ripen fully will noticeably slow the rest of the plant. If you want seed for next year, choose one fruit on a strong lateral late in the season and let that one go, not one in high summer.
How to judge the moment
Count from the female flower opening. In warm weather a fruit is ready in twelve to sixteen days from pollination, and in cooler weather up to twenty. Rather than trying to remember, watch the fruit itself. The warts and ridges on a young fruit are tight and sharply defined; as the fruit approaches its limit they broaden and flatten out, and the green loses its depth and starts to look slightly glossy. That flattening of the warts is the most reliable visual signal you have.
Size depends on the type you are growing and varies far too much to give one number. The honest test is the blossom end: press it gently with a thumb. While the fruit is still firm all over it is good. The moment the blossom end gives slightly, ripening has started inside and you have about three days before the color shows.
| Stage | What you see | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Young | Deep green, warts tight and sharp, very firm | Most bitter. Pick here if you want the strong flavor |
| Full size green | Green with a slight sheen, warts starting to broaden | The standard picking point. Firm, milder, keeps best |
| Turning | Pale patch at the blossom end, yellowing tinge | Pick today. Flesh is softening and bitterness is dropping fast |
| Yellow | Yellow overall, flesh soft, seed coats reddening inside | Past use as a vegetable. Cut off and compost or keep for seed |
| Split | Orange, opened along three seams, red seeds exposed | Save the seed if the fruit was a good one; clear the rest |
How bitterness changes
Bitterness is at its strongest in the young, dark green fruit and declines steadily as the fruit approaches ripeness, which is why two fruit off the same plant a week apart can taste noticeably different. If you find the crop too harsh, the simplest adjustment is not to change how you cook it but to leave the fruit two or three days longer on the vine and pick at the point where the warts have just started to broaden.
Growing conditions matter too. Fruit produced under drought stress, or on a plant that has been left short of water for a spell in high heat, is markedly more bitter than fruit off a plant kept evenly watered. Very hot weather increases bitterness; the cooler fruit that comes in early autumn is generally milder. Fruit picked from the shaded interior of a dense plant tends to be milder than fruit that has hung in full sun.
- For a milder fruit Pick a little later, keep the plant evenly watered, and take fruit from the shadier part of the vine. Scraping out the white pith along with the seeds after cutting removes a further share of the bitterness.
- For a stronger fruit Pick young and dark green from the sunniest part of the plant. Fruit taken at two thirds of full size is the most intense you will get.
- Salting to draw it out Sliced fruit tossed with salt and left twenty minutes, then rinsed and squeezed, loses a good part of its bitterness. This works on any stage of fruit and is the usual fix if you have picked something fiercer than you wanted.
Cutting and keeping
Cut, do not pull. The fruit stalk is tough and pulling tears the lateral, opening a wound at exactly the point where you want more flowers. Use snips and leave half an inch (1 cm) of stalk on the fruit. Pick in the morning while the fruit is still cool and turgid.
In the peak weeks a well grown plant produces something every day or two, so picking becomes a daily walk rather than a weekly event. Picked fruit keeps three to five days in the salad drawer of a fridge, wrapped loosely in paper rather than sealed in plastic, which makes it slimy. It does not keep at room temperature in summer: a fruit left on the kitchen counter will start to yellow within two days, because ripening carries on after cutting.
Do not store bitter melon next to apples, bananas or tomatoes. The ethylene they give off accelerates the yellowing considerably, and a fruit that would have kept five days will turn in two.
What to write down at harvest
Note the date of the first picking and then keep a running count of fruit per plant. The first picking date, set against your sowing date, is the number you will want when you plan next season, and the running count tells you honestly whether a plant that looked magnificent actually produced anything.
It is also worth noting, for two or three fruit across the season, how many days passed between the female flower opening and picking, and how bitter the fruit turned out. After one season you will have your own local number for days from flower to picking, which is far more use than any general figure, and a sense of which weeks give the mildest fruit on your site.