Cooter-Back

Named because the neck end of the fruit can become slightly narrower causing the fruit to look like a turtle. Later picked fruit was incredibly sweet, tangy, and juicy, but a bit stringy. Fruit is elongate and dark green with darker green striping. Fruit is up to 18 inches long, 7.5 inches in diameter, and weigh up to 20 pounds. Fruit rind is 0.5-0.75 inches thick. Strongly vining variety is rather late in maturity and not very productive when grown in 2016 at Heritage Farm. BRIX reading 12.4. Donated to SSE by Daryl McCall (IA MC D2), who described this variety in his 1998 SSE Yearbook Exchange listing as "W.H. Brickle says this variety has been passed down from family to family, thought to have been offered in a 1937 seed catalog." SSE Accession # 128029