Tzimbalo Fruit

Regrown for 2026.  A new fruit I tried in 2023, and a very intriguing looking plant. Has somewhat of a ferny look to it, and the fruits form in little clumps on the tips of the plants, up to a dozen fruits on each tip. Each fruit looks a little like a watermelon, or some kind of teeny exotic melon the size of a cherry – light minty green with dark green zig zaggy stripes. All summer I kept sampling the fruits and found them to be very bland, with no detectable sweetness. So I sort of gave up on them until about early October when I was cleaning up all the pots, and harvested all the fruits just to see how much I could collect from 2 plants. Just by chance I tried one last half hearted time to sample the fruit and was SHOCKED at what a flavor transformation had taken place. They were sweet with some tanginess, sort of like a kiwi or a bit like a pineapple – a definite tropical taste. The flavor was AMAZING! I don’t know what influenced the fruit to become so sweet at end of season but it may have been the exposure to a lot of cold nights. I’ve since read these plants can survive a light freeze. I grew it for fun, to see what they were like, but these were so good I would grow them again just to eat more!