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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 21, 2014 10:53:14 GMT -5
Greetings all
Well, the gourds I planted this year actually made some fruits
My problem is as follows; it's been so long since I have grown gourds (or for that matter any other cucurbit where having the fruit ripe is of significance to use.) I have honestly forgotten how to tell when the fruit is ready to be picked. The plants don't seem to have tendrils anywhere near the fruits, so the watermelon trick doesn't work, and I know it can't be "wait until the stalk detaches of it's own accord" since gourds are presented with a piece of stem attached. The LOOK like how they would if I bought gourds, but I want to be sure. So in your opinion, do the above fruits look "ready" (these photos were take last week, so please factor that in). This is of particular importance in the case of the fruit in the first picture as the plant is basically dying. The fruit looks great, but the rest of the plant is terminally in mildew; to the point where I am not sure if it still actually has any leaves (I know the vine with the fruit doesn't (though it has a cluster of flower buds on the tip) but that gourd forks more or less as it comes out of the ground, and the other side snakes under one of the rice bean clumps, so for all I know there are working leaves hiding under there. I am loath to destroy the fruit by taking it before it is mature, but I am equally a little concerned that, if I wait too long, the mildew (or some other bug caused by the plant dying will travel up the vine and rot the fruit from the inside out. The stem is nice and deep green on the fruit, but as soon as that stem attaches to the rest of the plant the green fades, and the rest of the vine is now a very barely green tinged sickly yellow white.) The other vine looks healthier (though it is suffering too) so I may have more time (oh and in the last week, the fruits may have gone from the white you see above to a cream; it's hard to tell since they are shadowed by bean leaves.)
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 21, 2014 11:13:58 GMT -5
Woo Hoo! Gourds.
My strategy is to pick decorative gourds the day before the first frost (or the day after if the workload is too high and I'm focusing on higher value crops). In other words, when the plant dies of natural causes is a great time to pick the fruit. Some of my squash plants start dying a few weeks before frost. I sometimes pick the fruits then, and sometimes wait. If the plant is already mostly dead then it's picking time in my garden.
The hardness of the skin is a good first approximation to the state of the seeds. Soft skin that is easily scratched with a fingernail --> soft immature seeds and the possibility that the fruit will dehydrate or rot instead of dry. Skin that is a struggle to puncture with a fingernail --> hard viable seeds and a fruit that will store well.
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 21, 2014 11:56:15 GMT -5
So it sounds like a "pick" on the first one, since the plant is mostly dead (frost tends to come as a sort of surprise here so "day before the first frost usually means "give up, because the frost snuck in earlier than the weather people predicted or "ruin you crop because the WP predicted a frost months early and you picked everything too soon.) and a "hold" on the second since the vines are still (comparatively) healthy. They all feel rock hard by now at least by knuckle knocking I don't want to swatch the skin, since I want to be able to put the fruit on my Autumn table for a while and scratching the skin usually means the outer skin gets moldy (fine if all you want it the seed, but a brown or bone colored scraped gourd is not nearly so pretty as one that still has it's colors) In fact the crooknecked one is actually being suspended by a chopstick splint, to keep it suspended in midair, so that the soil doesn't scratch the skin. One thing though, If you wait until frost to pick your gourds, how do you sell any? Unless frost comes very, very early for you, by that time fall, .e. the prime period when people would buy ornamental gourds, is more or less over. Do you bank them and sell them the next year (A lot of the local FM sellers around here do that with the Indian corn, since the last couple of years, the seasons have shifted so far forward it is actually isn't coming into maturity until mid-December.) Oh and these also prove just how much crossing must be going on. All of these came from the little pile of seeds I found under my bedroom radiator and since I don't recall buying many gourds in the last few years, it is highly likely all of them came from the same fruit. There was actually an aborted fourth gourd on one of the other vine(the vine broke off at the base before it was really much grown) and that was sort of the middle in appearance (it had the round shape of the second but the stripes of the first) Oh and the crookneck showed EXTREME early coloration, it had its orange and green zones when it was still a female flower BUD!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 21, 2014 14:41:10 GMT -5
I expect a squash-killing frost in 2 to 3 weeks. I have mostly stopped picking the summer squash and cucumbers so that they can make seed. I have stopped irrigating the muskmelons. A few of the winter squash plants are croaking. Tomatoes are getting just enough irrigation to keep from wilting. For me the first fall frost is simple to predict... The first clear night after the first rainstorm in September. Our market goes for 9 to 10 more weeks. Some of the growers in the next lower-elevation get about an extra two weeks. Basically we stop the market when winter snows arrive. (About the third week of October). I end up selling most of the popping corn the next spring. There's just too many distractions to get it dried, tested, and moisture-adjusted before the end of market.
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 21, 2014 15:19:54 GMT -5
OK, so for you the first frost comes before the real gourd buying season (which here basically runs from Oct.1-just after Thanksgiving). That clears that up.
As I said around here, it isn't uncommon for the "autumn" crops to not be ready to pick until it is practically winter. Frost here are erratic (which is why I have so much trouble predicting) Some years the first frost can be the first day of September (in fact there are warning that could happen this year) Sometimes it's very late November or even Mid to late December (there have been years when I have finished up Thanksgiving dinner with peaches and (alpine) strawberries I harvested off the plants THAT MORNING). Sometimes we get a blizzard in September, sometimes it's February before we see any snow (and there have been years when it did not snow at all). So I am used to assuming that most of the corn I see come fall (at least the stuff grown around here; supermarkets have the option of trucking it in from wherever the want) is actually from the previous year. I actually think that's a good thing, since it means it's shellable as soon as I buy it (as opposed to having to leave it around for a month to finish,not easy when you drying room is your bedroom.) Though sometimes it does go too far. Those "mini cobs" I saved so many of my strains were, I think, actually harvested SEVERAL years before I found them; given how ravaged they had been by meal moths.
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Post by flowerweaver on Aug 22, 2014 9:08:30 GMT -5
Other than luffa, I have only grown the kind of gourds that are hollow shells and can be made into containers or birdhouses. I have a long season, so I am able to let them dry on the vine. I guess the decorative ones like you are growing must keep for a while like pumpkins, but eventually decompose? I have only bought them in stores, and that was a long time ago. I never cut one open, so I'm assuming they have some flesh unlike mine.
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 22, 2014 9:41:01 GMT -5
Not really. While more closely related to pumpkins that the birdhouse ones you mention (which I assume are some sort of bottle gourd) Ornamental gourds do have that hard woody shell too (at least most do retail wise the line between ornamental gourd and small decorative pumpkin/squash is a little blurry). There's really only a very thin layer of flesh on the outside before you hit wood, same as on yours. After a while that flesh layer can go moldy but the mold doesn't usually get inside of the shell. They dry down to more or less the same sort of rattly thing as the bottle gourds. In fact, most gourds used by native people probably were/are pepo gourds. There ARE bottle gourds in the New World, and have been for centuries(some scientists think they originate from a bottle gourd fruit or two actually falling into the ocean in Asia and floating to the New world.)but pepo's have been in common use as well
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 22, 2014 14:16:09 GMT -5
After going out today, I discovered that Neither of the vines had any functioning leaves anymore (well the second one had three tht hadn't gone brown, but they HAD gone totally white with mildew)So as of this time, all gourds are harvested and drying.
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Post by mskrieger on Aug 24, 2014 10:40:43 GMT -5
Good call, blueadzuki.
As for the fingernail test, don't worry too much about rot. I do it all the time. In our climate, most gourds and winter squash will actually scab over and heal a shallow surface wound, such as that inflicted by a fingernail--I've had critters take a few bites out of a maxima (groundhog- or city bunny-sized bites), and had that fruit simply scab over and keep for months.
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Post by blueadzuki on Aug 24, 2014 15:16:26 GMT -5
Oh I wasn't worried about rotting them with the fingernail test. It just didn't want to disfigure them with scars. These gourds have to go on the table centerpiece come Thanksgiving; I want them to be as attractive as they can possibly be. The big crooknecked one already has some scabs from coming in contact with the ground, I want the other two to be as pristine as possible.
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Post by philagardener on Aug 24, 2014 17:51:52 GMT -5
Oh I wasn't worried about rotting them with the fingernail test. It just didn't want to disfigure them with scars. These gourds have to go on the table centerpiece come Thanksgiving; I want them to be as attractive as they can possibly be. The big crooknecked one already has some scabs from coming in contact with the ground, I want the other two to be as pristine as possible. Everything has a down side
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