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Gardening

Luffa or loofah growing

(10 Posts)
craftyone Tue 18-Feb-20 13:48:07

I just ordered some seeds. They are grown like courgettes and I have a spare garden obelisk. Would be wonderful, I need to grow them to maturity and then let them dry out and voila, I have loofahs

felice Tue 18-Feb-20 14:16:35

We had these in our garden in Cyprus, we had to prune them every day or they would just take over, and a lot of watering was needed.
I seem to remember they were on a shady wall.

Framilode Tue 18-Feb-20 14:49:22

Yes, ours grew as a climber on a shady wall in Uganda. We didn't ever water it but there is a lot of rain in that country.

BradfordLass73 Tue 18-Feb-20 20:25:39

I grew them with my grandson. The were in full sun but didn't get very big as they were in pots, not the ground.

MamaCaz Tue 18-Feb-20 20:38:30

After someone mentioned this very thing on Gransnet a few months ago , i bought some loofah seeds on line and hope to grow them this year too.

MamaCaz Tue 18-Feb-20 20:39:52

What I hadn't realized when ordering (on Amazon) was that the seeds were going to come from China!

Squiffy Wed 19-Feb-20 10:37:04

I love the idea of growing these and think I'll order some seeds and start off the plants for the GCs to grow so that they can pick their own loofahs. I feel a competition coming on! My loofah's bigger than your loofah!

Farmor15 Wed 19-Feb-20 14:44:06

We grew these some years ago in polytunnel. Only problem was getting them dried out so we could remove skin and seeds etc. They had a tendency to rot in our damp climate.

Framilode Wed 19-Feb-20 16:26:42

I would imagine they would grow and dry out well in a conservatory. We inherited a small lemon tree with the house that grows in the conservatory. It had 6 full sized lemons on it this year which is better than we ever did with our trees in Spain.

craftyone Fri 21-Feb-20 20:20:14

I think I had better be careful and (hopefully) only grow a few actual fruits, I`ll cut any others off. I am expecting a taller obelisk, which is going into a slightly shadier area. I`ll hang any luffas on a rack over a floor with underfloor heating. Ok it might be a total failure but will be fun and could be productive and will certainly help with plastic use.