Once again, a plant that has been credited with powerful effects ranging from diet-free weight loss to lowering blood pressure. Before you wave off in annoyance, please remember that the majority of our medicines consist of separate plant active ingredients – against this background, it is a pretty good idea to explore the diverse ingredients that plants have to offer us even as a healthy person. Do you hate bitter food? Then the bitter melon can still please you as a pretty and willing to grow climbing plant that makes few demands.
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description
Momordica charantia comes from Asia. Its homeland is India, it was introduced to China as early as the 14th century, today it is known throughout Asia and is used in many preparations from all parts of the plant as a medicinal and vegetable plant.
In addition, as a gourd, the bitter melon is exceptionally decorative and vigorous, developing long tendrils and large, vine-like leaves at an impressive rate.
Buy or seed?
The tropical pumpkin plant is not sold as a cultivated plant in our normal trade. You can occasionally find a “ready-made” bitter cucumber in nurseries that specialize in tropical plants, or from private enthusiasts who have raised several bitter jumping cucumbers from seed.
You can obtain seeds from many dealers, on the Internet or from specialist nurseries with a wide range of products. Cultivation is not particularly difficult, but there are a few tricks to keep in mind:
Cultivation of the bitter melon
The bitter gourd likes to grow wild on the banks of rivers or lakes.
The bitter melon needs some “persuasion” to germinate:
- Start seed preparation about three weeks before a warm spring is expected in your region
- Soak seeds in lukewarm water for a few hours before sowing
- Seeds need to swell and then get out of the water, which takes about 6 hours
- Now wrap the seeds completely in damp kitchen paper
- Place the packet of seeds in an opaque container on the heater
- friendly warm, but not “boiling” heating, seeds should be stimulated but not cooked
- 21 to 23 °C is optimal, the seeds stay there for a few days
- First, the outer shell of the seed bursts
- A few days later the first fine roots have formed
- In the meantime, prepare seed pots
- Recommendation: use pots of the same size
- usual rearing in small pots requires pricking out (separating the young plants)
- often doesn’t do the bitter melon any good
- Pot around 20 cm in diameter
- fill with fertile soil, e.g. B. with commercially available potting soil
You should time the sowing so that the seeds/young plants are ready for planting when the dark winter days are over and the sun is already noticeably warming.
In warm regions of Germany, the bitter melon is said to do well if you sow it directly outdoors or at least grow it in a bucket outdoors as soon as the soil or air is warm enough. Then you can only grow them once a year if they produce better fruit, but you also get the seeds for the next season and you save the bitter melon from pricking out.
Bitter melon is said not to grow well in the greenhouse. By far the best results are reported from plants that have been allowed to grow in an outdoor location (even in a container).
Location, climbing aid, rearing
The location should definitely offer sun, the more the better.
If the bitter melon is to be grown in a pot, you should provide this pot with a trellis right from the start. For the tender young plants you can z. B. make a climbing aid out of wooden skewers.
The pot should be taken outside as soon as possible in a sunny spot, the young plant needs quite a lot of water.
When the plant has climbed to a height of about 1 meter, usually in a single long shoot, you should cut that shoot down to ground level. Sounds brutal, but this is the only way the bitter gourd will produce multiple shoots, and the more shoots it produces, the more fruit you can harvest later.
maintenance
Once you have gotten the balsam pear to the point where several shoots climb along its structure, it is actually easy to take care of.
It will form tendrils up to 2.3 m, with relatively large leaves; provided it gets enough sun and enough water. When the plant has established itself well and is already in the main growing season, you should support vigorous growth with weekly doses of some standard liquid fertilizer for flowering and green plants.
harvest
Momordica charantia grows really fast, about six weeks after planting the germinated seeds you can expect the first flowers if you start the seed preparation at the earliest possible date we can at the beginning of April, around the middle of June.
Depending on the variety, the unripe fruits appear very shortly later. With the fast-fruiting varieties, the fruits can be harvested as early as two weeks after flowering. You can estimate when the fruits are ready to harvest by their size/weight: they are still green then, but should already weigh around 100 g. But you don’t need to be that precise anyway, green means “slightly immature” anyway. This is how the fruits of Momordica charantia are traditionally harvested and eaten.
Harvesting only almost ripe fruit has the advantage that fruit will grow back immediately. The fruits ripen so quickly that you are more likely to have trouble with overripe bitter gourds than with underripe bitter gourds.
use
When harvested, the fruits are between 5 and 15 cm long, depending on the variety, and look like a cucumber with pimples, more or less depending on the variety. There is a reason why the fruits are harvested when they are green and unripe:
You can eat them now. They should only taste a little bitter when unripe and stimulate the appetite (the gastric and bile secretion) with these bitter substances. The bitterness should be reduced to almost zero if the sliced bitter melon is salted and rinsed off after 15 minutes. In this form, the bitter melon is used in many Asian salads and hot dishes.
If you wait until the fruit is yellow and therefore fully ripe, the skin has become too hard to eat. In addition, both the skin and the fruit have developed a degree of bitterness at which European palates usually give up. Many Asians are not bothered by the bitter taste. The ripe fruits are said to give soups a bitter flavor.
The red flesh around the seeds should develop a distinct sweetness when ripe. The seeds themselves are said to make an interesting spice when ground. You can also eat the leaves. They are cooked into vegetables, the younger leaves are said to be used like a curry-like herb.
If you want to plant the bitter melon because you want to benefit from the medicinal uses, you are probably more concerned with the tea, which adorns a special place in the shop window in many health food stores and pharmacies. It is cooked from dried leaves, which are said to contain less bitter substances than the fruit. But the healing effects attributed to bitter melon make an impressive list.
Your ingredients should
- Lower blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure
- promote blood circulation and the immune system
- inhibit inflammation
- stimulate fat digestion
- good for insect bites, burns, arthritis, hepatitis, bacteria, viruses and tumors
Anyone who twists the corners of their mouth in disgust at names like Angostura, Jägermeister, Chartreuse, Ratzeputz or Underberg will not be happy with a bitter gourd, even if it has been debittered in a salt bath to the point of losing any trace of aroma. It is not recommended to use bitter melon if you have a sensitive stomach or are pregnant. For all other applications, a doctor should of course be consulted beforehand.
propagation
In bloom, bitter gourd develops male and female flowers, which will give rise to fertile seeds if you allow the fruit to ripen. You can select these seeds and sow them next year.
If you let the fruit overripe, it will burst open itself, releasing seeds and sticky flesh, hence the name Bitter Spring Cucumber.
wintering
Sometimes the bitter melon is described as a perennial and sometimes as an annual, there are probably short-lived and long-lived varieties.
If you want to try overwintering: bitter gourds in buckets should be overwintered warm and bright.
They are then fully cultivated, you should only make sure that the plants are not too wet in the root area. Even in winter you can occasionally fertilize the bitter melon.
species and varieties
The Momordica belong to the gourd family, as a separate genus bitter melon with around 60 species, some of which are cultivated:
- Balsam apple, Momordica balsamina, was introduced to Europe as a home plant in 1568, known in homeopathy.
- Gacfruit, Momordica cochinchinensis, popular Asian fruit often used to cook a festive orange-red sticky rice, e.g. B. for wedding dinners.
- Momordica cymbalaria, Indian species, which is used there in folk medicine to treat diabetes mellitus.
- Kantola, Momordica dioica, is used as a vegetable in Asia.
- Momordica foetida grows in tropical Africa and is used there for and against many things, as food and for medicinal purposes.
There are different types of Momordica charantia itself, which differ in growth habit, ripening time and fruit characteristics. Large-fruited, thick-fleshed hybrids have also been bred in India. When you order seeds, however, no specific variety is usually specified.
Conclusion
Most gardeners love cucurbits as exceptionally vigorous, attractive climbing plants. This also applies to the bitter gourd, which, however, likes to freeze over here and suffers from a lack of light. It should do best as an annual seasonal plant in a bucket outdoors. If you want to grow bitter melon to use in the kitchen, we recommend a test purchase in an Asian shop, then you can decide whether you prefer a tasty aroma or unbearable bitterness – that the bitter gourd ensures weight loss by “not eating”, was not meant.
