This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show Focusing on ways of doing it yourself to save money in the garden, right? And today we’re gonna talk about a squad of member of the gourd family that’s not necessarily always grown for eating That’s right, but it’s very useful. It’s the luffa gourd right and It’s a very interesting plan
I grew it once in my garden and I say that after I grew it that one time I knew I didn’t didn’t have to grow it again for many years because I got myself lots of gourds and in turn there are lots of luffa sponges, right? We have one in our shower and I always thought it was from From a sponge from the sea a sea sponge, right? It’s very similar diver gone down and chopped it up and Brought it up, right? It’s much better that I actually is comes from much more
Growing your yarn and it’s much more renewable that way and we’re not destroying the oceans I know how they work as an exfoliate on the skin, but how how well do they work in the kitchen? I’ve never used mine in the kitchen Well, let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves here We want to talk about how we want to grow this thing and when we harvest it and so forth So it’s it’s kind of just like a a zucchini or you know any type of Squash you grow it just like a squash
Gourds are just like squashes, but you can’t eat them, but they are decorative, right? This one is very useful because the innards inner side the innards of the thing is a sponge and like it’s like we said earlier it kind of looks like a sea sponge So the best thing to do is to grow these things in full Sun and I would say a very sturdy trellis the trellis I had that time with the the things got so heavy they pushed the trellis over I learned my lesson but a strong
trellis would do it and then let them do their thing and let what let the fruit completely mature on the vine Before you pick it and the best way to tell if the fruit is mature is to grab the thing and Shake it and if you can hear the seeds rattle inside the thing, then it’s ready to be harvested How much work is it to get to the inner sponge part? Well Once you cut the thing cut the thing off and you need to take
a knife and slice into the skin and peel away that skin it’s fairly hard just like a winter squash But you know you can get in there and peel away that skin and then loosen up that sponge the seeds will shake out you save your seeds put them in a paper bag and let them dry someplace cool next year and dark and you can plant them the next year although it sounds as if one plant was enough to last you quite a while certainly but they do make nice gifts I’d imagine yes so what we
did was we ended up making our own soap and in this process we got some liquids and we poured them into molds and we added some flower some different flowers like lilac and lavender and we sliced a piece of Lufa and put it in each bar and then so when it when the bars solidified they were clear you could see the the flowers in there and you could see the Lufa and we
gave I gave one each to my clients when I was landscaping as a holiday gift and you know it’s kind of a nice American craft I’d say you make soap and as you’re washing yourself there with it the Lufa eventually exposes and helps to scrub but you know this in this case we slice the Lufa’s about I’d say three quarters of an inch thick and submerge them in the soap dish in the you know for each mold
so I but I’ve seen you know I had put a put a full Lufa in the shower and then when you take a shower you scrub yourself with it have used it next to the sink washing dishes you know basically it is a renewable resource of vegetable that you can grow in place of using synthetic materials to scrub yourself in your yes and your plates and pots and pans and it will work well on I’ve never used mine in the kitchen
I work it works so folks have you grown Lufas let us know I haven’t but hopefully you’ll grow some for me well we can do it yeah we could certainly do it in our community gardens yeah yeah that’d be great and then we’ll have plenty of sponges to pass around and maybe it’s deer resistant who knows
yeah I don’t think dear eat these oh good although you did look up and said that you said that they were edible in it in when they’re young right we don’t know that folks so we’re not going to recommend you it sounds as if it’s part of the Indian cuisine some dishes are made with this but I think it’s much further in it yeah it’s not something that’s we’re gonna throw on the grill here in America yeah so who knows you know harvest if you about what I read it does have to be harvested young to eat and I
do prefer to harvest all of my squash and a zucchini you taste better on the younger side myself and definitely my zucchini when it gets hard sure and the charm on you know as well but it’s primarily we’re recommending using it as a utility yep yes well folks have a good one so goodbye from weed and whack join us next week we’ll be back