wanting to grow luffa to use as bath sponges please email me if you have some seeds for the luffa gourd. Because I never hangout in the gourds forum so I will forget to check the posts here thanks ahead of time for your help:)

http://www.turtlepassgourds.com/gourds/ this is my site, if you go to the egg gourd page, i've burn my eggs first, painted, and i too used paint pens to go into the outlines to define them. then stained and varnished, them. I didnot paint to heavy either, it just didn't look good. add a little water to your paint, i think you'll like it better, if not then you can always add more... hope this helps a little. melinda

Penny-Are you talking about tools to use for cleaning the inside of a gourd? There are tools specially made for that purpose but I improvised when I first started working with gourds. The first "tool" I used was a melon baller! Works pretty good and I still prefer it for some projects over the cleaning tool that I ordered. I also use spoons that I sharpened with a file. Just about anything that has a sharp edge,or that you can sharpen the edge of,and that is comfortable in your hand. Remove the seeds then scrape off as much of the soft membrane as you can with the tool,then use coarse sandpaper to get the rest. Finish off with fine sandpaper for a smooth finish. The surface should look like wood when finished. You can then seal the inside with a water base acrylic sealer. You can also paint the inside surface with a water base acrylic craft paint or even decopage,then seal with acrylic sealer. This is safe if you don't plan to use it for food,(as in soup),and will make it easier to clean with a damp cloth. You can also use an oil like is used on wooden salad bowls to prepare the inside for the bowl. I think there is a food safe Tung oil for that purpose and I have also heard of people using vegetable oil to seal the inside. If the inside is properly prepared gourds can be used for food,(yes,even soup),as they have been for hundreds of years. Good luck.........Lillie

All bugs like them but, like most plants that thrive in tropical and sub-tropical areas (I think luffa gourds first were domesticated in Viet Nam), the plants grow so fast that the bugs don't seem to hurt them at all. Insects certainly don't slow down or hurt the plants at all. This is about as close to a foolproof plant as you can grow, as long as you have plenty of heat and sunshine and do not have highly excessive amounts of rainfall. The yellow flowers seem very attractive to bees, which is a good thing because the bees need all the help they can get. Some people find that the luffa gourd plants attract aphids away from other garden plants, but I don't have many aphids in general so cannot vouch for that myself. They are rampant growers so put them someplace where they can run wild like....climbing a trellis, a pergola, fences, trees, the western wall of a house or outbuilding, an oil derrick, or maybe Jack's Magic Beanstalk. They love, love, love to climb and will climb as high as they can.