Gourds

At a recent Master Gardener meeting, Josie Herbert gave a presentation about growing and decorating gourds. She made it all sound so easy and  her decorated gourds were so beautiful, that by the end of her presentation we were all trying to decide where we could grow gourds in our own gardens! Here's the skinny....

First, you must decide which kinds of gourds you are interested in growing. There are ornamental gourds and hard shell gourds.

Ornamental gourds are the pretty colored, small to medium gourds used for decorations in the fall.

Hard shell gourds are green on the vine, and dry to a light brown color.

Gourds are planted early, after all danger of frost, and grow all summer. The seeds need to be soaked overnight before being planted in a sunny location. They should be planted in hills that are 6 feet apart. Plant 8 seeds per hill, thinning seedlings to 3 plants per hill later. Fertilize around the hill with 10-10-10.

 Now gourds grow really long vines, really long!! Josie recommended pruning your vines at a length of 8 feet. Some growers let their gourds mature on the ground while other growers recommend growing gourds on a trellis. And one of the coolest things Josie told us was that if you grow a hard shell gourd in a box is will adopt the box's square shape! Now who doesn't want to try that!!

Josie says the key to saving your gourds from rotting is to leave them on the vine until the stem turns brown.  Then make the cut so that it leaves a stem length of 2-3 inches. Hard shell gourds should be laid out on a pallet so that they aren't touching, and placed in a shed or garage until they dry. They will most likely mold, but that's OK. Mold can create interesting color and design variations. After the gourd is dry, the mold can be washed off with hot water and a Brillo pad. If you don't like the design revealed beneath the mold, just sand it off with a light grit sand paper.

Hard shell gourds are named for their shape. Josie had a great variety of gourds to share with us.

I am sure you can pick out the apple gourd in the picture and the cave man gourd. The one with a figure eight shape is a bottle gourd. For more shapes and names go to:

http://americangourdsociety.org/FAQ/types/chart.html

But the best part of the whole presentation were Josie's beautifully decorated hard shell gourds!!!

To transfer the leaf design seen above, she used a stencil and shoe polish. She also talked about filling in the design with crayon so that it acts a relief when applying the shoe polish. For more, try this site:

http://www.craftstylish.com/item/9500/how-to-craft-with-gourds/page/all

Hard shell gourds can be finished with paste wax.  If you drill small holes around the top of the gourd opening, long needle pine and raffia can be woven into a decorative finish. Learn more at this site:
http://www.americangourdsociety.org/slideshow/pineneedles/print.html

It was another interesting Master Gardener meeting!! Now let's get out and grow some gourds!!

Love ya'll,

Shelli