Luffa update in the garden

I finally got the hang of it with my Luffa gourd, after initially producing 1 Luffa Gourd I started researching why my plant only produced 1 Luffa Gourd when it had tons of yellow flowers. Well, I found out that the plant was full of male flowers and I need female flowers to bear fruit, my mission became how could I get this plant to produce more female flowers after reading around different articles in the world wide web the answer was seemed to be phosphorus, I  decided to give it a try. I added fish fertilizer 5-1-1 and it helped a little bit and produced 1 female flower but it still was not enough, started looking around my garden stuff to see if i had a fertilizer that contain phosphorous and bingo… I had Espoma Citrus-Tone fertilzer  5-2-6, it had a little bit more phosporous so a gave it a sprinkle and in 1 1/2 weeks, flowers started emerging but this time female flowers. The pictures below display the female flowers and the 1st gourd ready to pick and peel. I waited for it to turn brown to remove. Once, I removed it I started to peel the skin to reveal a slightly wet web, then I cut it in sections to remove the seeds. I decided to soak mine in water with a little bleach to give it an even light color and then I rinsed it well and place it to dry in my laundry room and Voilá.

 

 

More gourds and a closer look the female flowers with the baby gourd.

Published by Art by Isabel

Artist, gardener, and creator. I'm an artist obsessed with gardening, DIYing, and with a passion for baking.

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