I skipped this year’s gourd planting (too busy making goats milk soap), but last season I planted heaps of varieties in mini raised tyre garden beds (I figured it was okay to use tyres because we weren’t going to be eating the gourds). The tyre beds were the easiest way for me to get the gourds growing without worrying too much about the boggy clay paddock. And they were the cheapest too as the local mechanic was only too happy to donate the tyres for the purpose.
So…if you’re planning on planting gourds, get ready for some work! They need good soil, good bug management and then lots more work at harvest time (and unfortunately, some of the seeds didn’t even sprout). But…the real work starts after you’ve dried the gourds thoroughly (ours have been in the shed for a year!) Yes, the real work starts when you need to clean the gourds! Yikes!
If they’re still whole, you need to soak them in warm water for 20 minutes
Scraping the gourds
If they’re not whole ie: if you got excited and cut one open to make yourself your first bowl, you should first scoop out all the innards or they’ll become a smelly mess on soaking. It’s best to scoop out the inside of the gourd with something like a melon baller or specialised gourd tool, but we only had a teaspoon available!
One scraped gourd! One sore hand!
So…after soaking for 20 minutes, the real work begins. Detergent doesn’t help, you just need lots of muscle power, scrubbing brushes and steel wool to get the mould off. Now I know why washed gourds are so expensive…first the seed costs in Australia are high, the soil needs to be amended, there’s lots of manual labour and water needed, and then it takes forever to clean and polish the babies up!
Gourds soaking
Gourds clean but still wet
Next step is for me to make some beeswax furniture polish and give the bowls a real shine. I’m hoping to sell the beeswax furniture polish at farmers markets. We visited the inaugural Gloucester Farmers Market on the weekend and it was great! We’ll be there at the next one selling our goatsmilk soaps, honey lip balms, organic essential oil balms made with our beeswax and more…I’m actually thinking of taking an ice bucket and offering little bottles of fresh raw goatsmilk and raw honey so people can go home and have a Cleopatra bath! 
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