need advice on growing gourds

[trisha]

I am growing a gourd plant for fun. My dad use to grow them and make wren houses out of them. My plant is blooming a lot but I only have 1 gourd so far. I would think every flower would turn into a gourd?? Any advice will be appreciated!

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

What you have is quite common to have only 1 gourd, partly due to the weather and pollination. I have a lot of plants but only a few gourds on them, it rained too much when the plants were blooming. You still have time to get a few gourds if the female flowers pollinate. The fewer gourds you have on a plant, the larger the gourds get. Too many gourds on a plant and the gourds stay small

Most flowers are male flowers and will not turn into gourds. The female flowers have already started a small gourd before they bloom.

If it gets dry, be sure to keep the plants watered, as I already have mine watered one time (about 8 days since it rained). Water them every week if it does not rain

Good luck

[trisha]

Emil, it seems my dad use to help pollinate them.. Have you ever done that? I guess I need to read up and see how to do that. :) Thanks for your help!

[Chris B]

I have zero success in getting my gourd seeds to germinate. I tried soaking them overnight, clipping off the "ears", just putting seeds into the ground. Luckily a friend has much better luck getting them started and I have 6 plants. The biggest by far has one flower on it now.

[tim414]

Take a light painters brush and cross pollinate the flowers. It works well. Make sure you have all the same variety.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Sometimes early in the season, I may hand pollinate a few, but it seems to make little difference. I pull the male flower, and touch the two centers of the male & female flowers.

Its easy to tell if the seeds are good. Cut them in half, and look at the center, if its white then they are good. If the center is tan or brown, then the seeds are bad.

Seeds require the soil to be warm enough or they will not sprout and come up (they may even rot). When the soil gets warm enough, they come up within a week. I have put the seeds in small pots, set them in a warm place in the early spring, and when they come up, then quickly plant them into the garden. They will grow good when the soil is warm enough.

If you start them in small containers, then plant them in the garden within a couple days after they come up, they do not do well in pots.

[taxidermy lady]

I have 2 gourd plants going. I Have 2 nice small gourds on my one plant. I have already trimmed back some female vines. The other plant has small baby gourds on it.

Emil do you trim any of your vine? I only need 4-5 gourds to hang on my gourd rack. I am going to just try to grow 2-3 on each plant. I have never got big enough gourds yet for martins.

Chris last year that's what mine did. They rotted before they come up. But this yr. when I planted them in the pots I placed them on top of the hot water heater. But like Emil said they need to go in the ground when they come up. When it was cold in May I covered them with a container at night because of frost. Good luck

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

No, I do not trim the vines. If there are a lot of gourd plants, it becomes impossible to trim them. However, I do pull off all the smaller gourds late in the season when they do not have enough time to get large. I also like to limit it to one gourd per small vine because often, there are 2 gourds right beside each other on the same vine, I cut off the 2nd one.

[taxidermy lady]

Ok thank you. They are very challenging to grow. Good luck!