Plant · P-212

Winter Melon

Benincasa hispida

Winter melon's most useful trait isn't its own fruit but its roots: grafted onto its rootstock, more disease-prone melons and squash gain real resistance to the soilborne wilts that threaten most of this group, a technique used commercially across Asia. Its own fruit is also the best keeper of any vegetable in this collection - a waxy coating lets it store for months, up to a year, with no refrigeration, and a single fruit can run anywhere from 2 to 50 kilograms. The scraped-off wax from the rind is traditionally made into candles, a genuine household product grown rather than bought. Left to sprawl rather than trellised, the plant also spreads low and wide across the ground, shading soil the way squash does, though trellising for cleaner fruit gives that up.