GOURDS: AN EXCELLENT ""FUN AND PROFIT"" CROP

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Within a couple weeks of the time the seedlings break into the sunlight, the vines will begin to grow at an incredible speed. They'll branch and rebranch, form tendrils, and start up the trellis ... then the first flowers the long-stemmed male blossoms—will form. Female flowers will follow shortly (you'll recognize them by their shorter sterns and the embryonic gourdlets hidden below their petals).

Of course, before gourds can begin to form, the male flowers and the female flowers have to got together somehow. This is normally taken care of by late-working honeybees or moonlighting moths . . . but if nightflying insects seem to be scarce in your area, you can always help fertilization along by breaking off a male flower and rubbing it against several female blooms.

From this point on, you have to make sure that your plants don't go thirsty. A gourd vine -with its dozens of platter-sized leaves—transpires (or "sweats") an unbelievable amount of water during those dry, 100* midsummer days ... and it it starts to wilt under the afternoon sun you can kiss part of your crop goodbye, since the smallest gourds will dry up and fall off.

Unless you got a heavy rain at least once a week In the summer, then, your vines will have to be irrigated. This Is a simple matter, though: Just use your hoe to build a low 6' X 6' dike around the base of each plant, and fill the 36-square-foot area with about 2" of water once a week (or more often, if the plants' leaves start to go limp during the hot part of the day). By fall you'll have a bumper crop for sure.

We usually harvest our gourds after the first autumn frost. (The cold air causes the plants' leaves to shrivel up exposing the fruit.) You can harvest your crop earlier than this if you want, however. You'll recognize the mature gourds by their matte surface and dull-green color. (Immature gourds are dark green, shiny, and covered with "down".)

The next step is to let the gourds dry out. We start curing ours in the sun on our porch roof, until we can get around to bringing them indoors ... then we (1] pierce the stems with a nail, (2] string the fruits together on a wire, and [3] festoon them from the coiling next to the heater. About four months later, they're bone-dry . . * and ready to be converted into $15 "works of art". Here?briefly?is how we work that conversion:

First, we select a symmetrical, blemish-free gourd and cut off its top with a hacksaw. (A regular carpenter's saw will do the job -if it's sharp, that is-but we prefer the narrower cut that a hacksaw makes.) Next, we take a stick and ream all the seeds out of the gourd. (Our goats and chickens consider these a delicacy.) Then we sand off the shiny outer skin since paint adheres best to a slightly rough surface, and smooth off the saw cut at the top of the gourd.

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