Snake gourd

Ever since we decided to do organic gardening,we were aware of the experts' saying that the first two years will be hard and no reasonable harvests will be seen for all the hard work we put in the soil. But once the soil gets fertile in the first two years, there will no problems from the third year on and the harvests start flowing. How true is that!

Last year this time, the containers and the ground garden was bare and even the saplings did not sustain the hot summer let alone look for something to harvest in these months. We did have some harvests in terms of herbs and greens and drumsticks but none of the gourds sustained the heat.

During May this year, I decided to try our third year organic luck and sowed some snake gourd seeds in the first week of the month.That too after checking numerous times with mom whether snake gourd reproduce during all the months or whether they are season specific.The seeds sprouted within a week and the growing vine immediately took the neaby wall as it own and started climbing and onto the terrace.You can see we had not provided any support except for a single jute thread.

Come June,the vine started flowering but all of them turned out to be male flowers. Then the female flowers emerged and so far we had never had any problems with respect to pollination of snake gourd flowers.But we could visibly see the plant suffering due to lack of nutrition.

After providing a handful of vermicompost the first fruit set and quickly followed by three more. Notice the thread at the end of the twisted snake gourd in the below pic? The other end of the thread has..

..a large stone tied to straighten it up.

Some of the gourds are caught entwined in the vine true to its name.

It is a great feeling to harvest and hold them in the hand..the real example of our labour bearing fruits and that too in this hot climate.

This is the first harvest done and the vine has set many more female flowers. Another dose of vermi-compost will set us going for atleast another month of harvest period.