I have wanted to try growing my own luffa for more than 15 years (I kid you not), and this year I finally tried it. We have been picking and cleaning them for a while now, so I thought I would share a few pictures today of our most recent harvest.
We first selected the ripe ones (brown) and snipped them from the vines. The kids then snap off the blossom end and dump out the seeds into a bowl. Most of them come falling out (you can hear them rattling around in there) at this point and the rest come out when we wash them. (We only save for later planting the ones that fall out before washing.)
Then we peel them using fingers and occasionally a butter knife, but there seems to be several different ways of cleaning them out there. We may try other methods in the future, but this way is working great for us now.
Lilly had to have her own bowl of seeds to play in. They really are rather nice to run ones hand through and they sound so pretty hitting the bowl. Star, one of the kittens, is patiently supervising.
So this is our modest little haul for the day. They have not been washed and dried in the sun yet, but aren't they fun?
And there are so many more out there!
The Details:
We grew Luffa aegyptica pruchased from these very helpful people. It has a very dense fiber and a long growing season of 180 days. We really like it and have saved many (many) seeds for later planting, but I have ordered some Luffa cylindrica seeds to try next year. The Luffa cylindrica has a growing season of only 130 days and a slightly different fiber texture and I really want to see what it is like. :)
(Linked to Barn Hop .)
