|
Chanh Trach village in the central province of Binh Dinh is renowned for its giant winter melons that weigh as much as 100 kilograms.
The fruits are exhibited at national festivals where visitors gawk at their Brobdingnagian size.
A strange thing about them is that they grow so large despite the infertile soil.
But even stranger is the fact that the same seeds yield only normal-sized fruits if they are planted anywhere else.
“People from other places have come and asked for seeds and saplings to take back,” 69-year-old Nguyen Nga, a melon-grower in the village, says.
“We give them exactly the same ones that we plant. However, the winter melon vines bear very small fruits there and they then doubt us for giving them bad ones.
Nga puts down the giant size to the abundant groundwater in the village.
“After living here for generations, I know groundwater here is very abundant. You just need to drill a few meters, and water will spout. Probably the fruits here absorb a lot of good water and become big naturally.”
He says, astonishingly, that farmers hardly water the plants or use any chemicals.
Every year Nga buys 300 thich bamboo shoots to make a sturdy frame that can bear the heavy melons.
He has 200 vines that bore him 1,000 fruits this year.
“I was afraid they may become too heavy and cause the frame to collapse. So I cut some of them off, leaving just one fruit on each vine. I have so far harvested 200 melons weighing 10 tons.”
Another local, 71-year-old Nguyen Thi Lieu, says her family harvested 100 winter melons, each of which required two adults to carry.
“Every year, we only grow winter melons once. We start to seed in the 11th lunar month and harvest in the fourth month the following year.”
Lieu’s house, from the kitchen to living room, is filled with the gigantic fruits. When she sits beside them, she looks small.
Big fruits, small profit
The strangest fact is that despite their massive harvests every year, the village’s farmers hardly profit from them.
“We sell them for VND1,500 (US 8 cents) per kilogram but no one buys them,” Nga says.
Do Thi Hoa, Nga’s wife says, she cuts the melons and takes to them market, sits all day but still cannot sell all.
This could be because in Vietnam people hesitate to buy strange-shaped fruits since they are concerned about their edibility.
Hoa brings back the unsold portion and feeds it her pigs because her family is tired of eating winter melons.
Nga explains that people are not overly worried about this since they only grow the melons as a tradition passed down by their ancestors rather than for profit.
| 
