Ash gold also known as winter melon is one of the easiest vegetables you can
grow in your garden today's episode we look at how to grow the ash gourd or
winter melon easily in grow bags so we are starting our ash gourd seeds in
these seed starting cells it's a mix of coco coir perlite and a little bit of
vermiculite and compost and we bought our seeds on Amazon and I'll provide a
link to the seeds in the video description and the comments below
it all we are doing is just laying the seeds out and in about four weeks in
sowing we'll be transplanting our seedlings
into this grow bag if you remember this grow back this was
gifted to us by one of our YouTube viewers and we are now putting it to
good use and this one plant will be good enough to fit into this large grow bag
that we are using and two months in sowing you can see that the plant has
grown well now and it will start branching out and it will start
producing more shoots on the side as you can see here
we used a complete fertilizer during planting time and mix it into the soil
however you can use compost or manure or pretty much any kind of fertilizer when
growing ash gourds Ash gourds are not very demanding as far
as fertilizers go and they will grow into very healthy plants very soon as
you can see here and they will start producing multiple
branches that will hang out from your container these are the grow bags that
we are using here again and as you can see here the leaves are pretty healthy
and they're also growing very well and will start producing flowers very soon
you will see the male flowers coming up first followed by the female flowers the
ash gourd plant has the male and female flowers on the same plant and the male
flowers will usually come out first this is the male flower as you can see here
there is no fruit behind it and the female flower is this one that you see
here it's already pollinated and it has a little fruit that's growing behind it
and that's how you distinguish between a male and a female flower
and here you can see the female flower again it has a little fruit on the back
and don't worry if you are not seeing the female flowers they will eventually
show up and as you can see here four months since we sold our seeds the plant
has now become pretty big little bushy and is also growing this fruit the ash
gourd that you can see here now I just put the vine down on the ground so that
the ash gourd has space to grow the goads become very large this is also
called the winter melon plant and the reason it's called the ash gourd is
something we'll see very soon and you can see that the vines are pretty dense
and once you add the fertilizer during the beginning of the growing season you
can add another round after about three months
but this plant is not demanding I would only recommend adding fertilizer if you
see weak growth for your plants and as you can see here they will climb on to
any structure around them and you can see that the ash gourd is now becoming
bigger and bigger as it is go by and it usually takes about three to four
months and you can see here the reason why it's called the Ash gourd is because
of this ash like powder that's there on the surface of the fruit so it's been
six months now and we are ready for our first harvest and as you can see here we
are harvesting our first ash gourd and as you can see beautiful looking winter
melon here
you can see all that ash on my hand which is the reason why it's called the
ash gourd
and as i always do i will cut open this ash gourd or winter melon and show you
how it looks like and the skin is a little thick it's a
little hard to cut through the skin but the edible part of the ash gourd is
actually what's inside so the thick skin actually protects the ash gourd while
it's growing as you can see here from the inside it has a lot of seeds and
luckily most of the ash gourds or winter melons are heirloom varieties which
means that you can save their seeds and then grow them into new plants in the
coming years as you can see here this is the ash
gourd or winter melon the flesh inside is pretty nice soft and this is one of
the most delicious vegetables you can grow there are a lot of recipes you can
find for ash gourds or winter melons online the way we like to cook it as
boil it with lentils and it tastes just amazing
and as you can see here lots of seeds and you can save the seeds we save some
seeds for subsequent plantings as you can see here just take them in a paper
towel and dry them
and after harvesting you can see that the plant will continue to produce more
goods can see one growing right here and as long as the temperatures are not too
cold this plant will continue producing more and more ash codes or winter melons
so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing the ash gourd or the
winter melon have you tried growing this vegetable
before do let us know in the comments box below and do not forget to give us a
thumbs up for this video we'll see you again soon happy gardening