African Wine Kettle. One of my favorites! Work your soil well with compost. fertilize with lots of potash. water deeply and regularly. don`t be in a hurry to harvest.have a plan on what to do with several thousand gourds when the market for them bottoms out. get the new Red Hot Chili Pepper's disc "Stadium Arcadium". take a hit on a 14 or 15 if the dealer has a 9 or better showing. don`t be sucked into the notion that reality tv is fine entertainment. don`t be a bandwagon-jumper...cheer for the underdog down there in the mud who's fighting their genetic prison to succeed. Never sell your dreams for small desires. Always wear clean underwear. ~GG

Sounds like you have the "soft shell" variety of gourds. If they have yellow flowers they are for sure soft shell. They produce very colorful small gourds of all kinds of shapes. The only bad thing about them is that they only keep for a few months after harvest and then start to rot. Once in a while you can get one or two to dry but they loose all color when they do. They are great climers and if you already have a trellis I would suggest trying to grab those rascals who are headed for your yard and get them started on your trellis. They will grow over each other and get along quite well. The vines of the hard shell variety of gourds will easily grow to 30 or 40 ft. I don't believe the soft shells grow as long. If you get 3 or 4 inches of rain a month I don't believe you would need to water them. Watch the leaves, and if they start to droop all day long, then they will need watered. If your soil is decent, don't believe you'll need additional fertilizer. Sometimes that just promotes more vine growth but not necessarily more gourds. Next year try some hard shell gourds like bird house or apple gourds but be careful. They are very addictive!!! Keep the web posted on how they are doing. Good luck. Gene

Thanks again, Jan. This is so exciting. I have never watched vines grow so rapidly, and I have been a gardener all my life, especially, since the entire crop was a fluke. The seeds were tossed near the bank of a brackish- water, over-flow ditch in our back yard. I have a perennial bed on the near side that I have struggled to maintain because so many flowers and shrubs bite the dust with mildew and/or the acidic water supply. The water table here is one shovel scoop and WATER! Tap roots on trees(loblollies mostly)grow across the yard, not down. I have been discouraged with gardening since moving here. For me, it was all trial and error, but I have slowly learned how to select the right plants and to mound the soil as much as possible. The bank where the gourds are growing has a SLIGHT ridge and a thick bed of pine needles. So, I guess the soil (sand and compost) was good. I should have planted my perennial bed on that side of the water! However, the land is community property and boarders a neighborhood of condominums. Someone has already harvested a few gourds, but we contacted the owner's association and explained our dilemma and as long as we clean up after the gourds, we can let them finish growing this year. This is a one-time chance. Beachers here are more into the appearance of property than gourds! We had to pull the vines out of the grass area and contain them to a 200'X 14' mall-type area. This is when a picture would be worth a 1000 words. Fortunately, some of the neighbors thought we were growing water lilies! And, tourist season is over and only a few neighbors remain year round. So I think the remaining gourds(19) are safe now. If you have managed to read this far, I hope I have explained why I am so crazy to harvest and dry correctly this year. To answer your questions--the bushels are 48" round and heavy. I call them bushels, but I don't really know. They are nice and round and bigger than a basket ball. We went out yesterday and carefully placed home made pallets (14x14 frames with heavy wire tops) under each gourd. My husband made them when I explained about air and the damp ground. He is the crafter. One of the gourds has split--a big split. But the rest are nice and hard and two are tan colored. I cut back the new growth--the vines are still sending off hundreds of blossoms, and I tried to find the main vines but couldn't walk well without stepping on vines, so I just limited cutting to the fresh growth. What a tangle of vines. If I ever grow these again in another life, I will prune. The fishing net is strong. And because we live on pilings, we can hang them under the house--no big oaks around here! We do have a few loblolly pine trees, but the first branches are 20 feet in the air. I plan to hang some and leave some on pallets placed up on a deck, and some on the screen porch, etc. That way, the trial and error method won't make me crazy. I feel better just hearing your advice, knowing others share concerns, and knowing there are "gourd people" out there who can help me with all my questions. The gourd forum has made this experience great--even if the gourds all rot. Thanks again. Sasha

My neighbor has a chain link running along one side of our property. I planted a Mandevilla vine in a pot in front of the fence. There is a blue Plumbago growing there and some sort of Jasmine vine. All, but the Mandevilla vine was there when we moved into the house. I didn't expect anything from the Mandevilla because I bought it at Walmart almost dead. They said I could have it for $1.00. I bought it for the pot it was in. So I stuck it by the fence. It grew over the past 3 years, slowly but does flower on and off most of the year. I actually forget about it so it doesn't even get watered. This spring, I noticed how the Blue Plumbago and Jasmine Vine all grew into each other making a very pretty show. Now I regret not having planted the Mandevilla directly in the ground. Its very pretty and not aggressive at all. It hasn't grown much over the 3 years its been in the ground. Unfortunately, it rooted through the bottom of the pot so I'm afraid to remove it. Gary, the swallowtails love the blue Plumbago! Jane The pink flowers are the Mandevilla. Just lovely! Jane