It's exciting to start a new gourd garden. We got an earlier start this year, and it paid off.
The pictures below show the progression of growth over the season. We planted canteens, Nigerian bottles, pears, and kettles. All seeds were salvaged from gourds used in the items shown on the gallery pages.
 April 27th Planted! |
 May 23rd The gourd babies are ready for planting ...
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May 31st Finally! In the ground! Here are just a few of the mounds we prepared to set out the plants.
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June 2nd Needless to say, it rained heavily for 24 hours after planting, and dropped to about 50 degrees on the second night. But, they seem to have survived, and we are hopeful for a good crop.
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 July 6th What a difference a month makes! By all appearances, we'll have our first blossoms within a week.
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 July 8th First blossom!
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 July 17th Well ... somewhere in the past week or so, things have gotten out of control!
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 August 3rd Here's the largest of the canteens so far ... about 8" in diameter
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 August 3rd Very peculiar to us ... this big canteen (about 7" in diameter) seems to have "gotten too big for his britches," or something. There is a nearly perfect circular split right around the stem. We hung a sling around him, and we're hoping for a miracle ... that he doesn't get sick before the skin heals.
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 August 10th Biggest of the crop at the moment – about 10" in diameter – this guy has surpassed the former "champion" shown above.
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 August 10th This pear gourd jumped the fence and went to grow with the black raspberries.
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 August 10th Three of the scores of canteens growing throughout the patch.
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 August 10th And what the heck is this? Supposedly from a pear gourd vine, this one looks somewhat like a loofa or a zucca. We have several of these in the garden at present.
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August 24th This good-looking kettle gourd is coming along nicely, about 100 days (+/-) from germination. |
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 August 24th Currently the "king" of our garden, this beautiful canteen gourd (which looks slightly kettle-like) is about 24" in circumference and about 9" tall.
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 August 24th On the right is our "miracle" gourd. This is the one that suffered the "stress crack" (shown in a previous picture from August 3rd) when it was hanging from a tripod. We lowered the vine to the ground, and the crack appears to have healed itself. This gourd now is about 22" in circumference.
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 October 7th We got lazy and didn't keep up with the photos! The gourd in the front of this photo is the same one as immediately above. It is no longer the biggest one, believe it or not.
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 October 7th The new "king" of the garden! We're not quite sure how big he is, because his perch is a little precarious for measuring. But he's definitely bigger than the others.
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 October 23rd After a "killer frost" a few days ago, it snowed last night and this morning ... it's a safe bet that the growing season is over.
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 December 31st Here's this year's crop ... 141 total ... safely stacked away and drying.
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