Move over Jack and the Beanstalk. A handful of seeds have spawned metre-long Asian melons in a Keilor Downs backyard.
Martin Grgic couldn’t believe his eyes when a bunch of seeds given to him by a friend flowered up and over his pergola, resulting in the giant melons being suspended from the pergola ceiling.
When Star Weekly visited Mr Grgic’s home last week, seven of the huge melons were hanging in all their glory.
The longest measured in at 1.11 metres.
Mr Grgic said he had 25 melons hanging from his pergola at one stage but had given most of them away to friends and family.
The 75-year-old retiree has an extensive vegetable garden, growing everything from grapes, cucumbers and tomatoes to apples, pomegranates, figs and silverbeet.
But even he admits to being stumped by the identity of the vegetables when they first started growing. “I didn’t know what it was,” he said.
Daughter-in-law Amy said she found it amusing that her in-laws had used the melons in cooking, despite not knowing what they were.
“Some people were saying, it’s a pumpkin, others a type of zucchini, but then I saw it in the supermarket and it’s a melon,” she said. “It reminds me of zucchini; it doesn’t have an overpowering taste.”
It’s not the only case of gigantic vegetables cropping up in Brimbank backyards.
Earlier this month, Sunshine North resident Peter Zaharopoulos revealed a 1.5-metre zucchini growing in his backyard.
