I grew Joseph’s snake gourd landrace and the Yakteen gourd from Experimental farm network for the best 2 years and they really love Mallorca. They grow so easy here and are very productive, and have become one of my staples. Mallorca has a coastal Mediterranean/subtropical climate with very mild winters. I think the climate zone would be similar to 9b.
I harvest the gourds on the bigger side when the skin has turned too tough to eat but the flesh is still juicy and the seeds just starting to develop.
I simply peel them and discard the foamy seed part. When harvested at this size, they handle the 1.5 hour bike ride from my garden to my home in a crowded basket with no buising and store at room temperature for almost a month.
The long skinny ones I use to make vegetable noodles for woks and salads.
I discovered last year that dehydrated chunks (like you would dehydrate summer squash) make great soup and stew filler. So I’m growing more this year for this purpose alone.
It’s so convenient to have dehydrated vegetables stored for lazy soups.
They are also the easiest crop to save seeds from. I let them dry and harden fully on the vine and store them indoors. When I need the seeds in spring I just crack open the shell and the seeds come out clean and dry.
So this year I’ve collected lots more varieties, some long skinny thai gourds, round ones from india, a few speckled and a few italian varieties. It’ll be so much fun to see what shapes appear out of this mix next year.
Supposedly you can also use the shoot tips as a spinach, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Any of you growing Lagenaria siceraria this year? And have any great recipes?
Yes i did. but they were in the field and when they got out they didn’t look appetizing to me, I was too busy to even look up what to do with them, then i forgot about them and by the time i looked at them again they were like samba balls, the same thing happened like in your mini vid, the seeds came out of it.
And calabas i grew once, but that was an experiment and i hung them up in the greenhouse after knocking a hole in them to get the seeds out, They serve as wasp nests, holders i got a variety which is not very agressive in the hoophouse.
I am growing your seeds, Thomas ones, 5 other packages from swaps. A friend from Mallorca last year had grown them, they were very productive on a trellis.
Those other sizes look nice to add variety. I suppose the long ones are easy to process on to food.
Upload some photos in this thread when yours start producing! I think this could be such an effordless staple crop for us here in Mallorca. Last year I didnt remove all of the fruit from the field and they self seeded🙌🏻
I had never seen them in the shop, never ate them, never saw a program about them.
Prejudice full on! Great to see you find use for them and that they have become your favorits even, fits exactly within my philosophy that as a society we must much more focus on what does want to grow locally and if it grows find uses for it. Spread that knowledge into a newfound folklore.
In France, where i live, food is so important, people slowly open up to trying new things, especially if it’s well presented like you do, they’ll give it a shot, So thank you for doing that.
Growing a grex also this year: a cross of a long one and a giant bottle shaped + 3 or 4 strains, all selected for taste. Huge yields in 2022. I will upload pictures later. I like cooked gourds but never thought about drying them! Great idea!
All of this is relly interesting and you all inspired me to try grow Lagenaria next year and see if it will grow well on my small island. Maybe this could be a cucurbit that I’ll have some success since I struggle with pepos…
Anyway, I was reading some stuff on cucurbits on the forum and in this post there’s a link to an interesting blog post on bitter compounds aka cucurbitacin in various cucurbits, with some references linked at the end.
How drought tolerant are you finding them? I’m looking for crops that can survive without irrigation (supplemental water at seed planting time only) in a dry hot summer. Rainfall is supposed to be at least 500mm a year but in reality has been less for the past few years, especially over the summer. Most rain falls during storm events in spring and autumn.
Personnally I have been growing gourds without irrigation in 2022 and doing it again this year, but also using a plastic tarp supposedly keeps humidity in the ground. Pictures to come… direct sown 1 month ago so they still have no flowers… We should make close up pictures of seeds and flowers too to show how gourds are wonderful.
To me flavor is between zucchini and eggplant, with a wharacteristic : it stays firm a long time when you bake it prior to really soften, and I see it as an interesting texture, quite versatile.
