I grew loofa two or 3 years ago (the Guerilla garden nearby grew them last year and unfortunately did no research). Our season is just about too short for the necessary process (then drying out on the stalk), though I was able to pull it off and netted about 10 good loofah. I’m a soso gardener and like experimenting but my loofah project was able to succeed due to my experience with cucumbers and existing equipment for other garden projects. I don’t think I would’ve been able to pull it off semi successfully without doing extensive research - and I did most of mine on the internet .
My novice tips from experience:
(1) Start germination early inside - heating pads and automatic lighting helps. I think I started them some number of weeks before the frost. (Aka: start yesterday, lol)
(2) You’ll (probably) need only one plant. If your plant is happy it will be a prolific producer and you won’t need two plants. You can eat the young ones, and prepare to do so, as not all of them will make it to size for their fibers.
(3) If you do end up with multiple plants (hell, it was a struggle with the one plant I had) make sure you have adequate support for them! My neighbor who tried growing them last year is a seasoned urban gardener but the trellis he had was not strong enough to support his two plants.
(4) The season is too short here - so I had to quickly utilize the garlic curing/drying racks, our sunroom, and two fans to dry out the 20 or so that were big and seemingly fiberous enough too make it through to the end.
*Excuse any weird formatting & typos as this was typed up on my phone.
simple_syrup t1_j9amtk6 wrote
Reply to comment by Slopey1884 in Looks like Spring is right around the corner.....Gardeners of Pittsburgh, what do you have planned for this year's growing season? by NineFootEightWeight
I grew loofa two or 3 years ago (the Guerilla garden nearby grew them last year and unfortunately did no research). Our season is just about too short for the necessary process (then drying out on the stalk), though I was able to pull it off and netted about 10 good loofah. I’m a soso gardener and like experimenting but my loofah project was able to succeed due to my experience with cucumbers and existing equipment for other garden projects. I don’t think I would’ve been able to pull it off semi successfully without doing extensive research - and I did most of mine on the internet .
My novice tips from experience:
(1) Start germination early inside - heating pads and automatic lighting helps. I think I started them some number of weeks before the frost. (Aka: start yesterday, lol)
(2) You’ll (probably) need only one plant. If your plant is happy it will be a prolific producer and you won’t need two plants. You can eat the young ones, and prepare to do so, as not all of them will make it to size for their fibers.
(3) If you do end up with multiple plants (hell, it was a struggle with the one plant I had) make sure you have adequate support for them! My neighbor who tried growing them last year is a seasoned urban gardener but the trellis he had was not strong enough to support his two plants.
(4) The season is too short here - so I had to quickly utilize the garlic curing/drying racks, our sunroom, and two fans to dry out the 20 or so that were big and seemingly fiberous enough too make it through to the end.
*Excuse any weird formatting & typos as this was typed up on my phone.