How to save Mexican sour gherkin seeds
I'm
still on the fence about whether Mexican sour
gherkins will be a
permanent addition to our garden, but since the seeds are so expensive,
I decided to save some just in case. With no seed saving
information on the internet, I merged a tutorial on saving cucumber
seeds with my own observations on the natural history of the Mexican
sour gherkin to come up with the experimental protocol below.
First, I left some of
the earliest fruits on the vine to see what would happen. When
saving cucumber seeds, you're supposed to leave a cucumber on the vine
until it 
turns yellow and is fully matured, but Mexican
sour gherkins never seem to turn yellow (although they do take on a
yellowish cast.) Instead, after a while they drop to the
ground. I figured these fallen fruits must be mature, and
gathered them for my seed-saving experiment.
Cutting open one of the
fallen gherkins, I could see that the seeds now made up nearly the
entire interior of the fruit. I squeezed out the guts of several
fruits by poking a finger in each half. Like tomato seeds, these
gherkin seeds were surrounded by a frog-egg-like sack of fluid that must be
fermented away before the seeds can be saved. So I poured some
water into the cup with my gherkin guts and left it alone.
The internet reports
that the sack will have fermented away from cucumber seeds within three
days, but my experience has shown that these sacks tend to take about a
week to deteriorate in cool weather. Sure enough, a week later,
the water in my cup had become milky and, when swished, I could see
bare seeds settled at the bottom. So I carefully poured off the
water, rinsed the seeds in another round of water, then turned them out
onto a saucer to dry.
I'm very good at
remembering to save seeds, but once they get to the drying stage, they tend to accumulate in jelly
jars, cups, pans, saucers, and bowls in a long row along our
windowsill. I finally got around to 
putting
away tomato, cantaloupe, watermelon, garbanzo, drying bean, urd bean,
okra, pepper, and poppy seeds while taking photos for this post ---
see, a blog is good for
something. Check out last year's lunchtime series for more tips
on which
seeds are
easy to save and how to start your own seed saving campaign.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi!
Thanks so much for posting about saving these seeds. I was just thinking I'd buy more so I could grow seedlings for a couple of family members and was reminded how bloody expensive they are!
I'm wondering if you've done germination tests on them to see if your method worked.
Also wondering if there is anything I might be growing in my garden that could possibly cross with the MSGs. I can't find anything else in the Melothria family but M pendula, which seems to be a wild relative. Any info about this?
Thanks again!
I don't have any data on whether it worked yet, unfortunately. I didn't run a germination test because the seeds look good and I think they probably will sprout. If for some reason they don't come up when I plant them in May, I'll post about it, but I suspect there won't be any problems.
I doubt anything in your garden will cross with them. They're in a different genus from all of the cultivated vegetables, so unless you just happen to have a close weedy relative around, you'll be in good shape.
Just wondering if these did come up? I have seeds for these that were a gift, when I grow them in summer I will want to save the seeds
Thanks for a great write-up