Food-Gardening Lessons From A Wartime Victory Garden

Grow Gourds!

Growing Gourds - Jessie Keith
Learning to grow gourds is fun! Nothing beats beautiful, heat-tolerant, hard-skinned gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) for fall show and decorating. Growing them is fun and easy to do! They come in all shapes and sizes and are top notch garden plants for kids. In the fall they look beautiful in festive Halloween and Thanksgiving displays and for winter they can be dried and carved into everything from lidded containers to birdhouses or luminaries.

Plant these annual vines in spring after the threat of frost has passed, and provide full sun and well-drained soil fortified with a little all-purpose fertilizer for good gourd production. When temperatures heat up, the vines will start to spread, twine and ramble, so be sure to provide a strong trellis for them.

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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