Birdhouse gourd and various melon photos: Curcurbit Gallery?

[applestar]

Birdhouse Gourd:
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image1440.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image5232.jpg[/img]

Melon French Charentais "Edonis"
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4780-1.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4928.jpg[/img]

Melon Asian "Tigger"
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4923.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image5073.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image5069.jpg[/img]

Honey Dew "Honey Pearl"
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image5077.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4782.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4930.jpg[/img]

[kgall]

Applestar...What do you do with the gourds?

[applestar]

I want to use them for crafts. Last year, I only got one good fruit (about 6"H). I dried it completely but haven't done anything else with it yet. This year, the harvest looks promising so far. I've been doing some more research on how to process them. So far, the winner seems to be to soak them until all outer and inner soft parts decompose/rot Apparently, what is left -- the skeleton, if you will -- is extremely durable after thorough drying. One website instructions say that you end up with beautifully unblemished finished product ONLY if you thoroughly soak inside and out. Warnings abound that the smell of rotting gourd is disgusting. ...I'm trying to decide if I have the courage to try doing this....

If this works, I'm going to try growing bigger gourds and different varieties next year. Once I get the hang of it, I want to make some bird houses too.

[kgall]

Neat thanks.
About the smell...I recently spent 2 weeks smelling decaying rodent in the wall nearest my kitchen table. Rotting gourd can't be much worse!

[gixxerific]

Neat thanks.
About the smell...I recently spent 2 weeks smelling decaying rodent in the wall nearest my kitchen table. Rotting gourd can't be much worse!

That's ccol apple birdhouse out of gourds would be bad&*$.

Earlier this summer we had a dead mouse in our work truck that we couldn't find for a month, talk about hell in the morning.

[Duh_Vinci]

Very inspiring, great looking melons! Never tried growing them, but wanted... Any special care for those guys?

Regards,
D

[applestar]

Not really. More warmth than cukes or pumpkins, rich soil, regular water. My biggest concern was with watering because we usually have drought during the summer. I planted the main melon patch on the down slope, on the other side of the low levee for my rice paddy, which meant that as long as the rice paddy was underwater, the downslope side was constantly kept moist, even if the surface soil was dry. In fact, I was concerned about too much wet, so after piling the area with homemade rough compost, I layered about 1" of sand on top. After that, they're susceptible to same set of diseases and insect pests as cukes. I sprayed often, especially in the rainy early summer months, with 10% milk. Squished cucumber beetles all through August. They did surprisingly well. My main problem is harvesting them at peek ripeness. Still hit and miss so far. I had to make melon sorbet sweetened with sugar out of the last 3 melons.

[Turk]

I'd like to plant gourds to turn into percussion instruments. I have yet to choose a variety but there seems to be a fair bit of info online about the best ones.

Anyone have experience making percussion with gourds?

[applestar]

In that case, you HAVE to grow the Giant Bushel Gourd. They're supposed to grow as big as a bushel basket if limited to one fruit per vine, and strong when dried. Dried whole with some holes? or you might even be able to make a drum out of it -- cut across the top and stretch a leather chamois across tied on with raw hide? (This is an idea only. Have you ever read Dragon Drums by Anne McCaffrey?)

I've been looking at them in several seed catalogs and trying to think if there is any way I could grow 2 or three -- so far, my conclusion is "only if I use up the lawn space in the back yard... or the front yard"

[Turk]

The more interested I get in gourds the more room I find I need to dedicate to them. Going to be a fun summer, that's for sure!

[nes]

Did you rally up the courage? How are the birdhouse gourds doing?

I bought seeds to plant this year, I'm excited to see how the grow but I hadn't realized there was any technique to drying them.

Actually I saw they have little pots with a bit of soil & some birdhouse gourd seeds at the dollar store! So cute!!!

[gixxerific]

I have got a few in my basement just waiting. Not really sure what to do with them. They are dry and moldy. But it was Apple or Rainbow I believe that said to let them go and scrub off the mold when they are dry and they are good to go. That is for another day, too busy planning my garden right now.

[Gerrie]

Wow! I've never even thought of growing them but if a person could stand the stink, think what great gifts they would make, painted.

There is a very large church bazaar here the first weekend of November with really cool handmade products and one lady offers these painted gourds. I've got two that have birds painted on them, about 4" tall with a hanging loop on the top. They are tree ornaments and were only a few dollars each. Hearing about the work that goes into soaking and drying and painting them, I realize how much they're woth. This year I'm going to splurge on a big one. Keep us all posted on your success with these.

[applestar]

This year's Pumpkins, Decorative Gourds, Gourdkins, and -- featuring -- Jack-O-Bushel Gourds!

[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image8243.jpg[/img]

[jal_ut]

[url=https://www.amishgourds.com/site/1278922/page/456714]About Drying Gourds[/url]

[applestar]

Jal, that's a great link! I hadn't seen that before though I've read a lot of them.

I should post pics of the birdhouse gourds that I "harvested" earlier here as well. Some have dried and are rattling , and some are still green. Their vines were dead when the storm blew them off the trellis. The vines on the "bushel" gourds we painted were dead too so hopefully they'll dry/cure over time as well.

I don't know if I have the courage to leave them outside to freeze! What about last night that started out 31°F around midnight and so far has plunged down to 26°. Won't they freeze and explode? I do leave them out in frost if waiting for them to mature, but "cut my losses" and bring them in when hard freeze is expected.

[garden5]

What type of bird usually nests in these? I will occasionally see mass amount of them hanging in the air all painted white. Is it the purple Martin?

[applestar]

The larger ones mentioned in jal's link are used for Purple Martins. My smaller ones are good for House Wrens (who, in any case, are not very choosy ), and I had a family nesting in a similarly sized dried Turkish Turban gourd earlier this summer. Since I only "finish" them with beeswax, they're only good for the one season, but it's a lot of fun and gratifying to see them using bird houses you made yourself.

[lorax]

I'd like to plant gourds to turn into percussion instruments. I have yet to choose a variety but there seems to be a fair bit of info online about the best ones.

Anyone have experience making percussion with gourds?

Ooh, ooh, me! The best for hand-drums seem to be the larger ornamental gourds, as AS mentioned, but you can make interesting talking-style drums out of bottleneck gourds (tie the drumstrings at the point of the stem, so that they're stretched taut over the bottleneck part.)

The best way I've found is to grow a nearly round gourd, then dry it in your preferred manner (I use the tank-rotting method that has been touched on here), and take a fine saw (I use a low-kerf hand Douzuki) to remove the top and/or bottom of the gourd, leaving only the band. Then stretch your rawhide (or whatever skin you use) and lacing as you wish (I take the top and bottom to make a two-surface drum that I can tune by pinching the laces; one-surface drums are harder to skin and tune.)

[applestar]

Ooh! Ooh! Could you post some photos of your gourd drums, Lorax?

I just realized I didn't post the photos of this year's birdhouse gourds growing either I posted them in [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=156138#156138]another thread[/url], but here they are:
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image7725.jpg[/img]

Hmm. I could've sworn I posted more. I'll go look for more recent ones.

[lorax]

Nope, unfortunately. Those pics were part of the Great Crash of '08, and I've since sold the drums.

Once I've got drummable gourds again, though (probably in 2 seasons; I'm still figuring out this altitude desert gardening thing), I'll be making more and I'll definitely post pics of those. I was really fond of the bottleneck talking drums.

[jal_ut]

This year for the first time for me, I planted Birdhouse Gourds. We had an early frost and I think the gourds did not really get mature enough before the vines got frozen. I had planted these on a request from a friend, and when the vines froze, I told her to come get them. I kept six of them and she took the rest. She is drying them outside on a pallet. I asked her how they were doing, and she reported that she had lost a few, but the rest were doing OK. We got froze on the 6th of September, so it has been nearly two months.

I put the six I kept up in the rafters in a shed and they are drying there. This discussion prompted me to go check on mine. One had a nasty soft spot so I tossed it. The others look like they are still intact with no soft spots, but they are a long ways from dry.

I really liked the flowers on these gourds, and the vines were vigorous. I think though that they needed another month of growing time. The gourds would have been more mature and would most likely have kept better. I think I will plant them again.

[JenniferG]

I wonder how they would work as containers for planting...

[nedwina]

I tried gourds for the first time this year, and since I had a less than stellar result, I started in on heavy research. (And got lucky: there was a gourd farm on Dirty Jobs that rendered some good gourd growing & processing info.)

The hard shell gourds are pollinated at night by moths and (gasp!) possibly cucumber beetles. Bees may do a bit during the few daylight hours that they are open in the late afternoon, but they aren't the primary source. (So keep in mind that if you're squishing hornworms, you may be reducing your gourd pollination later! But don't mind me, I like hawkmoths~) Anyhoo, hand pollination is probably the best way to go regardless- but the flowers are only good for 24 hours, opening in the late afternoon & collapsing in the morning, so pollinate often during bloom time.

Female flowers form on the offshoot vines, so after the main vine reaches a comfortable length, (20 or so inches+) prune it to encourage offshoots.