Seedlings get going

November brings warmer days to Whanganui, so finally the tender little hue/gourd seeds can begin to grow and develop. The sprouting seeds look so cute and comical with their little seed helmets! These tiny seedlings will stay in pots in a warm place until they have a few more leaves and well-established roots. They need protecting from slugs and snails which could otherwise gobble up an entire baby plant.

Seedlings with their little hats

Seedlings with their tender and juicy seed leaves need protecting from snails and slugs

The true leaves begin to appear

Long hot days of summer

Long hot summer days are perfect for growing hue, a warmth loving plant. But without rain, the plants will be needing regular watering. A long soak every few days is better for the health of the plants than a daily sprinkle, which wets the surface of the soil but doesn’t penetrate down to the roots. To avoid the growth of mildew, water in the mornings before the day heats up

Time to grow

After a slow start to springtime, with an unexpected October snowfall here in Whanganui, the weather is finally warm and settled enough for hue/gourds to get growing. A good way to start the seeds off is to soak them overnight then sit them on a damp paper-towel in the hot water cupboard, or other warm place, with a lid to keep them moist.

Within a week, there should be little shoots poking out of each seed. Within a couple of days, the roots will be forming, so it’s best to get the sprouted seeds into a pot as soon as possible so the sensitive root hairs don’t get disturbed or damaged. The plant will take longer to get established if the roots get broken.

Huge hue

There are different varieties of hue and each one has a predetermined shape and average size. The size can be increased by taking all but one of the fruit off the plant, leaving just one fruit, which will grow larger as a result. The small ones that are removed are edible and can be cooked like a kamokamo. Bottle-gourds and other shapes of hue are very popular in Asian cuisine.

Small hue ready to pick for eating

Summer days of growing

The long hot summer will be excellent for growing healthy hue. The longer the fruit is left to grow, the thicker the shell can become, so the hue will be more robust. Lifting each fruit off the ground will help protect them from damage by grass grubs and other ground-dwelling insects.

From Flower to Fruit

Hue flowers need to be pollinated to form a fruit. The native NZ pollinator of hue flowers is the kumara hawk moth, which can hover while it inserts a very long proboscis like a drinking straw into each flower in search of nectar. Bumblebees also pollinate hue, catching pollen on their fluffy little bodies and transferring it to another flower in their search for a sweet drink.

It is possible to pollinate hue flowers by dipping a paint-brush into a male flower to collect the pollen, and then into a female flower. The female flowers have a slight swelling at the top of the stalk, at the base of the flower, and the male flowers don’t. When the flower has been pollinated, that slight swelling continues to grow larger and becomes a fully formed fruit.

Dried gourds

Summer is zooming on and this year’s gourds will no doubt be swelling up nicely in your gardens, especially with all the rain we’ve had around the country!  If you have a stash of dried gourds from past year waiting to use, this could be the time to get them out and start your creative project!

Dried gourds are often a bit scabby-looking and covered in old dried mould. To clean this off, you can immerse them  in water to soften the epidermis, then scrub the mould off gently with a goldilocks. The mould will leave stains on the surface of the gourd, but that does make beautiful and  interesting patterns. If your gourds are fresh ones from this season, you need to leave them to dry until the seeds are rattling around inside.

To open the gourds and clean the inside, first work out where you want to cut the gourd, draw around it and  use a small fret-saw to cut the opening. You can scrape out the dried seeds from inside, and put these aside for the next growing season. Clean up the inside of each gourd with sand paper or whatever other abrasive you wish to use to get the finish you want. If you only have a tiny opening, use gravel and water to clean your gourd out, followed by sand and water, then a bottle-brush.

To seal the gourd you can either rub oil into it or if you prefer, you can use varnish. Rubbing shoe polish onto the gourd and polishing it creates a nice colour and also a soft shine if that’s what you are looking for.

Gourds can be decorated by burning using a poker-work machine, but you have to be careful not to burn right through! Dried gourds have a woody texture a bit like polystyrene, so they are tricky to carve, but the surface can be incised or etched with a sharp tool.

Some of the gourds might have a very thin shell if they haven’t had a long enough time to grow. These ones will be very fragile, so extra care will be needed to cut and clean them.

Good luck with your growing and with your creations!

 

Planting time

Those great big gourds grown over last summer are almost all dry now with the seeds rattling around inside. So that was four months of drying time. Soon I will clean them up and then decide what to do with them!

Gourds need a really long growing season to build up a nice thick shell. Ideally, your plants can go out into the ground now, but Its not too late to plant gourd seeds for the summer. I’ve just put 12 seeds into water to soak for a day. Tomorrow I will put them between damp paper-towels in the hot water cupboard to hasten the sprouting.

Harvest time

Finally the first frosts hit Whanganui and those massive gourds were picked and put aside for drying. I’m guessing it will take 6 or more months for them to dry out completely, and then they will be ready to make into interesting containers. Last years gourds are waiting for transformation into things of usefulness or beauty…or both. We are planning workshops at Whanganui Regional Museum to create lanterns and musical instruments.

 

Autumn harvest is drawing near

Where did those last 6 months go? Its been a long hot dry summer here in Whanganui. Anyone who has managed to get a good crop of gourds has done well. We’ve got a few beauties waiting to be picked. The vines are still growing and flowering, because the summery weather has stretched out into May. These gourds are massive, so they will take months to dry when the time comes to pick them.