hello YouTube viewers in today's episode that will go over harvesting the 3
gourds that we grew in the last season
[music]
so we had an unusually hot February last season so I directly sowed my gourd seeds in these
raised beds and one thing I wanted to tell you about was the trellis that I
used now I used 3/4 inch PVC pipes to build the trellis and the
netting that you see here was interwoven along the sides of the PVC pipe so this
is a very cheap to set up a sturdy trellis the only suggestion that I
would tell you to change would be to use 1/2 inch PVC pipes instead of 3/4
inch PVC pipes and that's the mistake that I did so if you're planning to build
a trellis with PVC pipes a 1/2 inch pipe may be a better option as you can see
here the seeds sprout very quickly here in Southern California we had a warm
February last season this year has been especially cold
much cooler than last year but as you can see here we directly sowed the seeds
you could even start your seeds indoors if you wanted to so we planted bitter
gourd seeds
and the next variety of gourd that we planted was bottle gourd and finally the
last variety of gourd that we planted was snake gourd and although I didn't have
any space in my raised beds to plant them now in the month of May as you can
see the plants are in full growth so it takes about two or three months for the
plants to develop completely and start growing
now let's look at each gourd in detail starting with bitter gourd so as you can
see here the trellis has worked out very well you can see the bitter gourd has
started using it as support and these PVC pipes are pretty high they are
about five to six feet in height so they provide a lot of room for these
gourds to grow so you can see here we've started harvesting these bitter gourds
and bitter gourds are extremely healthy for you have a lot of health benefits
they let you fight a lot of diseases and for those of you who haven't tried a
bitter gourd or a bitter melon some people call it bitter melon as well its
the same thing bitter gourd, bitter melon
you might be a little hesitant to try it out because it's
actually bitter it's quite bitter in taste and has a very strange taste
now bitter gourd is also great if you're planning to do some juicing bitter gourd
juice is also a very healthy nutritional supplement that you can feed yourself with
and as you can see here harvesting a lot of bitter gourd .Bitter gourd or bitter
melon is one of the easiest gourds to grow in your garden and if you're like
us we consume a lot of bitter gourd not only raw but also cooked and here
you can see a video on how to prepare the bitter gourd or the bitter melon so
that most of the bitterness goes away but you can still reap the health
benefits and as you can see here we've been getting great harvest and I was
able to get this kind of harvest on the plant as you can see here a lot of
bitter gourds the right from May upto the month of November now it was
surprising that the bitter gourd plant was actually growing very well till
November and I actually had to take out the plant so that I could start my
cool season crops so it's a very prolific plant
and coming to the second variety of gourd that we grew this is bottle gourd and
bottle gourds are again very delicious very healthy gourds and just like bitter gourds
you can use bottle gourds for juice they have very good nutritional profile the
bottle gourd juice is quite healthy and the bottle gourd also has a lot of
volume it's a pretty big vegetable so you can do a lot of things you can cook
them you can juice them raw and there a lot of possibilities now the only problem
growing bottle gourds that I noticed is diet it's a very big plant so make
sure that you have a lot of space they love to sprawl across a large area so
this trellis actually worked out very well as you can see here it was able to
hold the weight of the bottle gourd pretty well but towards the end of the season
the plant got so heavy that it started bending the trellis on all sides and
finally the trellis was falling over to one side which is when I had to trim the
plant heavily But as you can see here
great harvest throughout the season we were very happy with the harvest of our bottle
gourds
and finally we have the snake gourd now the snake gourd is a very interesting
vegetable and unfortunately I didn't have a lot of space to grow my snake gourd so
it just crawled across the side and went on to the wall and as you can see here is
literally growing on the wall towards our bedroom window and it could not produce
a lot of gourds because this area is not very sunny but you can still see that
the gourds that were produced are pretty long in size and it actually looks like
a snake which is why it is called a snake gourd and as you can see here this
season we did not harvest a lot of snake gourds but for just one plant that was
growing in a very limited space we were at least able to get a few gourds harvested and
again, this is a very unique tasting gourd and if you haven't tried it you
should try growing it try to eat it cooked see how it tastes and if you like it you
can grow some more and these are the kind of vegetables these gourds are not
commonly available in your local grocery stores which is why it's a good idea to
grow them at home eat them fresh and enjoy the taste
so there we have it folks that was our video on harvesting the three types of gourds we
grew and I'd like to know from you what are your favorite gourds to grow do you
have some favorites that you grow every year do let us know and I highly recommend
that you watch our series on growing gourds I'll post a video link to that
in the final part of the video I'll see again soon
happy gardening