It would appear that the zone we live in is just barely passable for growing luffa. I'm thinking about buying seeds from Local Harvest. Now we need to find a place for it to grow. They need a strong trellis to grow their up to 20' tendrils on. Eek. I'm thinking maybe it could grow over the sheds in the back yard? I don't know how easy it would be to harvest them though. We need more wall to grow all the fun plants on! I'm wary of growing something that may become invasive near our neighbors, as a courtisy thing. I guess they could have their own luffas too though.
I think having home grown luffas for sale along with our handmade soap would be wonderful!
Luffa fruit and flowers from Outdoors-Magazine.com
A ripe/cleaned luffa and some seeds from Rasta Seed.Luffas are also good at cleaning dishes and other surfaces. One less thing that we would have to buy!
4 comments:
WOW!!! I had no we could grow those. I thought they came from the ocean. (Shhh...don't tell anyone.)
Hehehe. I thought so too :) I ordered my seeds and have already picked two places to try and grow them!
That's so cool. I definitely want to do this. If I am successful, they will make such an awesome gift!
Growing luffahs is not that diffcult. They are related to edible squash plants, but are far more fibrous at maturity (that's the luffah sponge part. I have grown them in the past. They need room to spread out their vines and climb, just like squash/pumpkins. They need decent soil, but are not that picky about it. They need lots of water and lots of hot weather. Deer, raccoons & squirrels will eat the immature fruits while they are tender, so guard against that if you want them to mature into the fibrous sponges. I found that drying the whole luffahs in the sun and then soaking them in water to remove their hard skins worked well to reveal the spongy insides. They do take some work to produce, but it's fun doing it.
Nice blog, by the way. I like that you are into self sufficiency and being "green".
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