Alright!
This is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com!
Today we have another exciting episode for you coming at you from my front my front yard
garden.
And in the beginning of my front yard garden, as you guys can see, I’ve got my raised
beds to either side of me, and then I have this arbor way or arch that we built with
this hog paneling so we have a nice trellis up either side.
And I did this for a few reasons.
Number one, it defines my space so it makes a nice little entry way to make my place look
more official and looking proper and nice.
But more importantly, for me, it actually gives me a space to grow more food, especially
more food vertically!
So I could grow food up this arbor vertically, and over the years I’ve grown a number of
things including cucumbers, runner beans, standard beans.
So this season, I actually—because the weather has been so warm, it’s here in December,
still really warm out.
Probably in the seventies today.
Totally loving it.
Working with my shirt off, actually, getting some sun, getting some Vitamin D. And if you
do live in a northern climate, not a lot of sun in the winter.
You may want to look into taking some Vitamin D. Vitamin D’s important.
Anyways, because the weather’s been nice the runner beans have actually sprouted back
and grown back, but as soon as we hit that frost, which I predict sometime in January,
these guys are gonna be wiped out.
In addition, another thing I have planted to fill up my trellis that will not be affected
by the frost, which I’ll hopefully get my trellis full of one of these days, the akebia
vine.
The akebia vine makes akebia fruit.
That doesn’t have a lot of fruit pulp in there to eat, it’s very seedy, but it tastes
amazing.
I’ll have an upcoming episode tasting the akebia fruit really soon.
So that’s what I’m doing here.
But for fun, I also planted this year some cucumbers, some Armenians that grew quite
well up the trellis and I had hanging cucumbers up here.
And then also I grew another thing, the luffa gourd, or also known as the loofah sponge.
So that’s this episode.
I gonna go ahead and show you guys how you can grow your own sponges.
So as you guys can see, up my trellis here, which is probably about ten feet tall, I’ve
got this vine growing up the side.
Actually, this is the akebia here.
It’s doing quite nicely.
This will not be affected by frost and I really like things like evergreens that keep their
greens year round because I think it kind of gets barren in the winter.
My grapes lose all their leaves, I have to trim it back and then I see the ugly side
of my house instead of just nice greenery all over.
And most of the things I grow in the winter time don’t grow super tall.
They’re just kind of low, hugging the ground, like the leafy greens.
But the akebia will keep its greens, and hopefully it actually takes over this whole trellis
one of these days.
And it’s perennial crops.
It’s just gonna grow year after year and hopefully make me tons and tons of delicious
fruit to eat.
That’s this guy, but actually up over here is the luffa gourd and the luffa gourd is
actually related to the cucumber.
So if you've ever had a cucumber before, you’ll know it’s in the same curbit family.
The cool thing about the luffa gourd, or the loofah sponge—let me go ahead and pull this
guy down here…
So these are the leaves here.
These are what the leaves look like, a nice star pattern.
Now this has been a good trap plant for slugs.
Or…if you look at it as a trap plant.
I look at it as a trap plant because I don’t care if the slugs eat this.
I’m just growing these for fun, I’m not growing these to eat, necessarily.
So if you do plant cucumbers and these guys, the slugs and snails may go for this before
your cucumber.
So I like growing some plants that are sort of sacrificial lambs or…sacrificial luffa
gourds.
So the other thing that’s cool about the luffa gourd is that there are many different
varieties.
I’m growing the standard long kind and this variety is generally used for using as a sponge,
but these guys are also edible.
I wanna show you guys, this is actually a little baby fruit starting to form here.
Here’s a little flower.
And when the fruit is young and small, you can eat it.
When the fruit gets big, do not eat it.
There are some varieties of the luffas that are more edible and delectable than others.
This is a standard variety grown for the sponge, so I don’t know how this is going to taste.
But we’re basically gonna pop this guy off here and I’m just gonna eat it just like
a mini cucumber.
Doesn’t taste like a cucumber, and I reckon most of you guys out there are not gonna like
this flavor.
I mean, I love all plants, I could appreciate this flavor…
It kind of tastes like a zucchini, when they’re baby and small, but then you got like a hint
of bitterness or strongness and that’s probably why you don’t eat them when they’re much
larger.
Cause that strongness probably gets more intensified, and that’s probably a natural toxin so that
predators will not eat the plant.
Any case, let’s get into harvesting one of my luffa gourds.
As you guys can see, I’ve got three of them hanging up there.
And normally to get a sponge, you’re gonna want to let them hang out and dry on the plant.
I’m gonna harvest one early for you guys because I want to show you what it looks like
on the inside, because normally you only see the videos where they harvest the ones when
they’re totally dry.
So I’m gonna harvest one totally un-dried and share with you guys what I find.
So let’s go ahead and harvest one of those guys.
So, cool, picked it off there.
Looks like a standard cucumber.
And if we go ahead and feel this and squeeze on it [gourd pops open]—oops—it’s kind
of like, hollow.
So we’re gonna go ahead and open that guy up and take a look at what’s on the inside.
Wow, it’s nice and watery.
So you’re not gonna wanna eat this even though you might think it is edible.
We’re basically gonna peel this off and wow, once I start peeling it off, what it
reveals underneath, unlike a regular cucumber, is this sponge-like material.
Now normally, these are dried on the vine and all the liquid and moisture would be basically
dried out, so then you would just see the sponge material only.
But as you guys can see, this is like a sponge.
And maybe part of the reason for the sponge is it keeps the seeds on the inside moist.
You know, if you’re using regular sponges from the sea, those are animals, but this
is a plant based sponge that you can grow yourself.
And I reckon if you grow one big huge trellis of these guys, you’ll have a bunch of these
luffas—that you want to let dry on the plant—and you’ll have probably a year supply of sponges.
Now the most popular thing that people use with these sponges is actually for body care,
so for the wife or for the husband…
You could take this guy and basically use this to slough off your old skin cells and
that’s really cool.
But the thing I want you guys to be aware about is this is a natural material.
It is not resistant to growing bacteria and harboring bacteria and allowing them to grow
on the inside.
So if you do use this for body care, once you use it once, you want to then sterilize
it regularly.
Maybe put it in some kind of like…autoclave or some kind of UV or microwave it to kill
all the bacteria in there because it can breed inside here even when this is dry in your
bathroom.
You can also use this to scrub out your sinks, scrub your floors and all that stuff.
Alright, so here’s a luffa sponge, and this is how effective the sponge is.
Look at this, we’re gonna wring this out.
Look at all that water dripping out of there!
Wow, that’s cool.
So yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and let this dry and I’ll probably get a sponge out of
this.
The other ones up there, we’re gonna go ahead and let those dry naturally and I’ll
have about a half dozen sponges this season, without even really taking care or managing
this plant.
So if you’re interesting in growing the loofah sponge, it does take a little bit of
a longer season to grow.
It can take about a hundred and fifty to two hundred days total, so you need that many
frost free days to grow them.
If you live in the tropics, this is a no-brainer.
And I guess if you don’t—if they don’t grow to full term, they’re gonna be a lot
smaller.
But I could probably cut this in half and scrub my sink down and maybe even scrub my
girlfriend’s back.
Alright, hope you guys enjoyed this episode learning more about the loofah sponge and
how to grow your own sponges.
I always want to encourage you guys to grow your own food and grow your own things that
you need and be a producer instead of consumer, and minimize your shopping at the grocery
store and you could easily do that in your front yard.
Not only with your food, but even things like the sponges.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode.
If you did, give me a thumbs up.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com.
We’ll see you next time, and until then, remember keep on growing.