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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 9, 2022 16:03:53 GMT -6
Years ago my mother grew luffa/loofah gourds in her garden. She didn’t know how prolific they would be, and I remember coming home from college and finding the floor of our sun porch just covered in these long plant skeletons. I don’t know where she had gotten the idea, but she kept us supplied with bath sponges for years to come.
Amazingly enough I have one last loofah from her in my shower, but it’s given me that idea that I should try to grow some to use as sponges for my dishes. I would love to grow my own compostable dish scrubbers. I was just wondering if anyone in this group has ever grown luffa and would share information about it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2022 17:46:23 GMT -6
I have tried several times but just cannot get the early indoor growth I need and this is only on my part from lack of light.
I had a volunteer that grew in a shady spot which was not good for it long term but it was sheltered and persisted until it dehydrated. I saw no need to water it. It gave me hope that there is a chance. I recommend fresh seed if you're going to struggle getting started.
If I have hope, you definitely could grow it in you warmer season. I bet you'll struggle with some cold snaps. I threw blankets over them at night. Had tip burn but the plant was okay .
I have a huge roll of light plastic that I did not order. It's purpose is as a soil warmer. I'd be using that to get the soil warmed up faster.
I'm sorry I don't have success to share with you but I have a heart for it. Your post encourages me to try again, because I now have a hot hot south facing garden that also has some sheltered spots.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 14, 2022 20:38:05 GMT -6
Thanks for the reply. I haven’t figured out whether I really need to start indoors or not because I do have a pretty long frost-free season. I just don’t know how luffa does with heat, though with a name like luffa aegyptica, one would have the impression that it can take heat. I do like to start cucumbers off inside, though, so I’ll probably treat these the same way. It will be an experiment.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2022 4:24:25 GMT -6
Do both indoor and direct, imo. Sometimes my direct sow will take longer to establish but they catch up with the babied plants.
They can handle heat with enough water, like everything else, they might stall in the more stifling heat. I could be wrong but the point of origin of the seed is to be considered. If my plants struggle but produce a little seed, it is the next year that can boast abundance with the new acclimated seed. I find this boring but often the real case.
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Post by macmex on Jan 15, 2022 8:11:01 GMT -6
I'm sorry, I only just realized there was a thread on luffa! I can't believe we haven't had one before. I grew it with great success some years ago. So I went looking for photos of my crop and then I realized that "some years ago" was actually "quite a few years ago." I have no photos of it at all, which means the crop was before 2013, when I started taking lots of pictures.
Last time I grew it I remember telling some friends on the Oklahoma Gardeweb forum, that I would be growing it every year because it was so very dependable and beautiful. Then... I didn't get around to planting it again. I do believe I have some viable seed on hand and really need to grow it this year.
There are at least two, maybe more varieties of luffa and I believe that angled luffa is the one which is considered especially good for eating as a young fruit. That's the one I grew.
Photo taken from Flickr
Luffa, eaten like summer squash, is sometimes known as "Chinese okra." I tried it and would say that in no way is it an okra substitute. I cannot imagine how anyone thought to call it that. I wasn't fond of it as a vegetable, but that's because it reminded me of a cucumber. Cucumbers tend to cause me digestive upset.
Still, I love the plant. I love the flowers. The flowers open as the sun is setting and are open all night. But they attract pollinators and they are beautiful.
The plant is tough as nails and does great in our hot summer weather.
Regarding the other varieties of luffa I can't comment much. I'm pretty sure they also work for sponges.
I started mine straight in the ground. I probably have less experience with this one than does Bon.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 15, 2022 20:37:27 GMT -6
Thanks for that information. I have read that luffa are edible when small, but my goal for growing would really be the sponges. My current thought is that I’ll sprout seeds inside and then try sowing them out in the cinderblock raised bed in my back yard. I think I’ll be able to move some tall trellis from the garden to that area to let them climb. The bed would get a lot of heat because it is in an inner corner of our house and gets southern and western sun. We had roselle there last year, and it did great.
I need to sit down with paper and pencil and really get to planning my whole garden to make sure I have room for everything. It’s getting to be a bit too much for me to try to keep in my head.
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Post by chrysanthemum on May 2, 2022 22:54:45 GMT -6
I don’t have pictures to post tonight, but I thought I’d update this thread while I have luffa on my mind.
I’ve been attempting to start Luffa indoors this spring, but I haven’t had the best success. I first put two seeds in peat sponges in my Aerogarden. Those sat and sat and sat and eventually rotted. I then put three seeds in some water on my microwave (because it’s warmer there). I keep them in water overnight, then drain them through a paper towel and keep them moist in that paper towel till I see roots. One gave me a sprout fairly quickly, I think, and I moved it to the Aerogarden where it grew into a seedling. I potted it up, and then transplanted it to the cinderblock bed after it was hardened off. That one has been growing. The other two seeds in the moist paper towel never showed a sprout.
A couple of week ago when I was soaking some pumpkin and squash seeds, I soaked two more luffa seeds overnight. I didn’t put them on a wet paper towel to try to sprout but just direct sowed them in the cinderblock bed. I’ve been pretty good about keeping them moist, but they just weren’t sprouting at all. I had really given up on them and was planning to try some replacement when, lo and behold, this morning there was a sprout at each spot where I had planted the seeds. April 20 to May 2 seems a long time to me, but it was very exciting to me to find those this morning.
The trellises have long been in place. I hope to have some beautiful luffa plants growing up them in the next couple of months.
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Post by chrysanthemum on May 19, 2022 19:37:35 GMT -6
I finally took my camera out back to grab a shot of my luffa plants. I have three in the bed. The one that I started inside and potted up and transplanted is climbing the trellis in the back corner. I have two more, one on each trellis, that came up from soaked seeds earlier this month. We’ve been having such high heat that the plants have been wilting in the afternoons, but they revive with emergency watering. I’ll be glad when they’re a bit better established and can endure more. I’m excited that one is starting to climb. I have hopes that they’ll provide some nice shade at these windows if they get big and bushy.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 19, 2022 20:57:23 GMT -6
Looking good!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 5, 2022 14:29:34 GMT -6
I lost my smallest luffa plant yesterday. It had never really taken off, and it’s in the portion of the cinderblock bed that gets the sun earliest. Yesterday I spent a lot of time in the main garden doing some extra watering and tending, and I didn’t get out to the backyard till after lunch. By that time the sun had shriveled the little loofa plant beyond recovery. I still have two others that are growing and climbing trellises. One is over the top of the trellis. The other is only about halfway up, but it greeted me with first blooms this morning. They’re larger than I was expecting and quite pretty to me. I’m hoping this will be a nice view out the window.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 5, 2022 20:45:21 GMT -6
I wonder if it would help to paint concrete sealer on the cinder blocks, to prevent them from wicking so much water?
My dad had a 28x28 basement under his house back in the early '70s. Water seeped through the concrete blocks day and night. There was always water standing in the floor down there until we painted the blocks with concrete sealer. After that, the water began running under the blocks rather than through them, so we had to dig up the foundation to paint the outside of the blocks and run perforated drain pipes along the walls to divert the water flow. It eventually dried up for the most part, but it was always damp and dank down there because it was a basement.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 9, 2022 15:13:55 GMT -6
I’ve thought about the sealer but didn’t do it. The luffa that died really had never taken off. It was only about 3 inches tall compared to the others that were several feet, so I think it had more problems than my missed morning of watering. Since then, though, I’ve been good about making sure that I get out there to water in the morning before the sun hits that bed. Our house faces east, and this is in the backyard, so the house shields it from sun until afternoon. The other luffa plants are growing tall, and they have lots of buds developing. I’m looking forward to seeing more flowers if I can keep them going through this crazy heat.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 12, 2022 16:04:46 GMT -6
I had my first male luffa flowers open this morning. There were also a couple female flowers at the top of the plant. I like to hand pollinate my cucurbits, but the female flowers were out of my reach. I had to climb up on the edge of the cinderblock bed to do it. It’s three cinderblocks high and seemed sturdy, but I don’t think I’ll make that a regular practice as I don’t want to weaken it. I’ll have to see how things do just on their own.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 14, 2022 16:24:48 GMT -6
I was looking through the photos on this thread. That was a lot of growth between May 19th and June 9th!
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Post by macmex on Jun 15, 2022 8:33:50 GMT -6
I'm hoping to start some luffa today.
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