Yesterday afternoon Randy was helping me clean out some overgrowth in the backyard, he asked me to come out back to ID what needed to go...specifically something really weird looking high up in the Crepe Myrtle tree. I have Gourds!!! I put the seedlings in the ground back in April but their growth was stunted for two months because of the almost constant rain and very little sun. Then summer hit and they loved it. Obviously the trellis and chainlink fence was not to their liking so they reached out and grabbed onto branches of the tree and liked it much better there. Our normal date of first frost is mid-November, some years it has been a month or two later. The largest gourd is about 10" in diameter, the second about 8" and the tiny one in the upper right that you can barely see the bottom of is only about 4". I know we don't have enough summer weather left for them to grow much larger and fully ripen, but I will leave them out there until the first freeze is forecast. If I then hang them in the dark storage closet is there any chance of them properly drying and being useful as gourds for decorating next year?
I'll keep my fingers crossed that they mature well for you Toni. Isn't it nice to get an unexpected bonus from your garden? :-D
Yes, they may cure for you. It's important when you pick them to keep the stem intact. I cure mine in a fairly open shed. They like air circulation as they dry. An onion bag is good. I have a lot of gourds so we stretch chicken wire and staple it between two old sawhorses. Turn them every month or so. I hope they dry for you. I'll have some egg gourd seeds for next spring if you want some.
Bethie, should I wait until just before the first frost to pick them or will they be okay until the first really hard freeze? There is usually several weeks between the first hint of frost and a hard freeze so they could have more time on the vine? I have a back room where I can hang them instead of the closet. It has good air circulation and I can hang them from the rafters.
Are gourds difficult to grow? I would like to give them a try. What are planting, watering/sun, etc. requirements :?: I love the different and strange ways they form (or is that something you have to do?) Toni, are these your first :?: Good luck with them
The shapes and sizes are determined by the type of gourd it is. The ones in my tree are Bushel gourds but they won't be anywhere near as large as they could have been. I decided to grow them because they are pretty expensive to order online, but now I think I will have to order some anyway. Oh, well, it was an interesting experiment. I think the rain and lack of sunshine until mid-July stunted them. Then for some reason they had a hard time getting started after that. They need full sunshine and a big trellis of some sort to grow on, the side of a building or a Crepe Myrtle tree like mine. 100-120 days to maturity then about a year of drying time before they are ready to cut or paint.
