Before we learn about the growing particulars of this new plant, let’s see why we would want it in our landscape.
 
Also known as melon pear, pepino melon, or pepino dulce, fleshy sweet cucumbers (Solanum muricatum) give us the best of both worlds, melons and cucumbers. Like other nightshade plants, they are sturdy and can produce for several years. However, commercial growers tend to treat them as annuals. Because sweet cucumbers are sensitive to handling and long-term storage, we are unlikely to see them in stores any time soon.

​That’s why you might want to grow them at home. Let’s find out how.

Now, how can a hybrid be accidental?
 
It ends up that, back in 1881, James Harvey Logan decided to create a better blackberry. He crossed a couple of local varieties and waited to see what would happen. Then, some nearby raspberries got into the act when Logan planted the offspring of his first experiment. This additional genetic information created not one but two new cultivars: the ‘Mammoth’ blackberry and the loganberry.
 
These perennial members of the Heather family look like blackberry bushes, but the fruit is dark red, more like a moody raspberry, and longer. Other raspberry-blackberry hybrids have been developed, including boysenberry, dewberry, nessberry, olallieberry, Santiam blackberry, tayberry, and youngberry.
 
What makes these plants so popular?
 
Most people agree that berries are delicious. But berries don’t always ship or store well, making them excellent choices for the home garden.
 
Like other brambles, loganberries are canes. Each plant will produce an average of 10 semi-upright stems which can be trained along a fence or trellis. In their first year, these primocanes focus on leaf and root development. Flowers and fruit occur in the second year on floricanes. After a cane has produced fruit, remove it at ground level.
 
Loganberry plants protect themselves with soft spines that can itch, so gloves are a good idea. If you prefer a thornless version, you can always try the ‘American Thornless’ variety. Or if a natural barrier to unwanted intruders would be helpful, a loganberry wall might be a delicious option.
 
Mature loganberries are red, but they are generally harvested while still purple. Each loganberry bush can produce up to 18 pounds of fruit annually and may live for 15 years.
 
Loganberry plants are propagated from cane cuttings and layering. They perform best in USDA Hardiness Zones 6-10. Space your loganberry plants six feet apart. They prefer full sun, though afternoon partial shade is acceptable.
 
Loganberry plants are rugged and tend to be more disease-resistant than many of their cousins. But they are susceptible to several fungal diseases, including anthracnose, Botrytis fruit rot, powdery mildew, raspberry leaf spot, rust, and spur blight, as well as crown gall and Phytophthora root rot. Avoid these diseases by providing good drainage and airflow. And be sure to remove mummies right away.
 
Common loganberry pests include aphids, dryberry mites, raspberry cane maggots, raspberry beetles, crown borers, root weevils, sawflies, and slugs and snails. As tempting as it may be to sprinkle salt around your brambles to protect the fruit against slugs and snails, don’t do it.

​Table salt may be great on that baked potato, but it does terrible things to your soil and garden plants. Instead, monitor your plants regularly for signs of infestation and infection to be the first to enjoy those luscious big berries as soon as they are ready!

Pepper weevils (Anthonomus eugenii) are specialists. These beetles are not interested in other members of the nightshade family, so your eggplants and tomatoes are safe, for now. But your chili peppers, jalapeños, sweet peppers, and tomato peppers are not.
 
Like your peppers, pepper weevils prefer hot weather. Native to Mexico, these pests have moved northward with the changing climate as far as Canada and the Netherlands. How they got across the ocean is anyone’s guess, but probably on infested fruit.
 
Adult pepper weevils are only 1/6th of an inch long, black, brown, or gray, with bent antennae and a long, curved weevil snout.
 
Pepper weevils eat flower and leaf buds, which can put a serious dent in your pepper harvest. Making matters worse, female pepper weevils cut holes in developing buds, lay an egg in each one, and then plug the hole with bug poop. When the egg hatches, the larva burrows its way to the center of the fruit, growing and pooping until it reaches a pupal stage. As adults, they continue feeding on the fruit on their way out and then start the cycle again. Females produce nearly 350 eggs in their very short lifetime.

Zucchini, melons, and several other cucurbits offer the added bonus of producing edible flowers. But it's important to know which flowers are male and which will produce the fruit you planted for in the first place.

​If you stuff all your male zucchini flowers with cream cheese and breadcrumbs, there may not be enough pollen available to pollinate the female flowers. Unless you have self-pollinating plants, that would mean no zucchinis and no chocolate zucchini cake!

In the photo above, you can see one long-stemmed flower bud on the left and one stubby flower bud on the right.

The longer stemmed bud is male. Male zucchini flowers appear everywhere on the plant and usually before female flowers. They have a distinctive cup at the base, and a knobby, pollen-coated stamen inside the flower. That pollen can be collected for later use, just make sure it doesn't get moldy.

The female bud stem is shorter and thicker, and it does not have the cup-shaped base. Instead, what looks like a stem is a (potential) baby zucchini.

Female flowers tend to stay near the middle of the plant, though not always. 

After the flowers open, pollen from the male flower has to come into contact with the female flower's pistil. This usually occurs thanks to pollinators, such as honeybees. My indoor windowsill garden requires hand-pollination, which simply means touching flowers repeatedly with a natural bristle paint brush every day that the female flowers are open. Indoor gardening is a lot easier than many people think.

Over the next few weeks, I will be adding photos to show you how the fruit develops.

​Be sure to check back for updates!