Northland
There are cute, curly ones; big, bulbous ones; gnarled, knobbly ones; long-necked, soft-skinned and hard-shelled ones.
Wendy Laurenson tells you how to grow and dry ornamental gourds.
Gourds come in a mass of shapes, sizes and colours, and their uses all over the world are as varied as their forms. They are used for making musical instruments, carrying food and water, birdhouses, as dippers and bailers, or they are decorated simply for the beauty of their bold forms.
Bottle gourds are relatively easy to grow and have a vigorous trailing or climbing growth habit similar to a pumpkin’s, but they have some particular requirements. They can take six months to grow and – if they are to be useful or artful – a further six months to dry, and they are frost tender especially in the early growth stage.
Whangarei gourd artist Glenis Nevin says growing them can be tricky, but success is addictive.
“I started growing them around 35 years ago when a friend gave us seed from Matatā in the Bay of Plenty. The seed was Lagenaria siceraria known as hue in Māori and these are different from the variety grown by Ngāpuhi in the north.
“It was a chance thing that was literally the seeding of a lifelong addiction for me, and I’ve been growing, studying, drying and decorating them ever since.”
Glenis has travelled the world visiting gourd growers. She also lived in China for seven years teaching English – and learning from other cultures and translating that into what works best for her here.
In sunny Northland Glenis plants her bottle gourd seed in polystyrene trays in mid-September. They can
take 21 days to germinate.
“I sow them as early as possible and treat them like babies, bringing them inside on cold nights and only planting them out once the ground is warm which is usually early October up here. I plant out around 40 seedlings each year about a metre apart on the sunny sheltered sloping ground behind my house, and I usually have healthy young plants by early November. I cover them when they’re young to keep the cold wind off, protect them from slug and snails, and feed them plenty of sheep pellets.”
Bottle gourd vines can trail to over 3m.
They need substantial support if they are to be trained onto a climbing frame. A frame allows the fruit to hang which creates a straight neck, whereas fruit grown on the ground can have more random neck curves. Glenis leaves her plants to trail over the ground but takes care to place them so that they grow the neck and body shapes she wants.
“My plants are usually spreading by mid-December and it’s best if they’re flowering before Christmas so I can hand pollinate them before I go away on holiday. Like pumpkins, gourds have male and female flowers on the same plant and are usually pollinated by insects (including moths for their night opening flowers) but hand pollination ensures I get a full round fruit. Because of my sloping ground, I sit any really big fruit in a polystyrene box so that it’s upright on a flat base when it’s mature rather than lying down on a flattened side.”
Gourds love plenty of water and nutrients while they’re growing.
But they don’t like wet feet, so need a freedraining site, and it’s best to water around the roots to prevent mildew. “I decrease watering in early autumn to allow the gourds to start to harden off.”
Each plant can form several fruit, but Glenis limits hers to one fruit per plant as she prefers to carve and decorate big fruit.
“I leave the fruit to mature on the vine because fully mature fruit will usually dry without rotting or shrinking. The maturity indicators are that their skin colour changes from green to light brown, and the stem completely dries and turns brown,” she explains. “I like to have them off the patch by Easter. Last year, I had 58 gourds ready to dry over the winter.”
Drying is a two-stage process.
Glenis begins drying the harvested fruit on the warm concrete by the house and in the first stage, scrapes off the rind or skin before it gets too mouldy.
“This is the worst job in the process and I use a curly metal pot scrubber and baking soda as a cleaning agent. I then move the scraped gourds onto polystyrene boxes on my concrete garage floor to begin the second stage of slowly drying the internal flesh over the winter months, and turning them every week.”
Big bottle gourds can take six months to fully dry, leaving just the seeds inside to rattle against the hard waterproof shell. The process used to stop here for Glenis.
“I grew gourds for years before I started decorating them. Now I love seeking out patterns and shapes to draw on their surface, then I carve those out to delineate the areas before painting them. I sell them in markets and galleries in Northland, and I find each stage of the process incredibly satisfying,” she explains. “I am addicted to these gorgeous bulbous bottle gourds and learning about their idiosyncrasies.”
For further information, contact Glenis on 022 0337 812.