Re: [gourds] Re:Planting time in S. Central Texas
A.B. Amis (gourds@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 11 Feb 1998 09:19:20 -0500
I thought Lillian's earlier post about planting times, growing seasons, etc.
was excellent --- now let's zero in on Zone 9. We live in Central Florida,
also Zone 9, so I expect our experience would similar to yours in the
Houston/San Antonio area. I'll paste in something I wrote earlier for our
Florida Gourd Society newsletter in the hope that it may be helpful to you
or others.
Regourds,
A.B.
snip ".... So instead of offering advice, I'll just sketch out some
general strategies and practices that we've evolved over several years of
moderately successful gourd gardening, and you can perhaps adapt some of
them to your own particular situation if you think they make any sense.
We try to select areas receiving full sun for our gourd patches. (We had
poor results the one year we experimented with partial sun.) We accept the
desirability of moving the gourd patches every year or two to minimize
chronic soil problems (nematodes, etc.), but this just hasn't been practical
for our main patch where we've built arbors for the vines to run on. We've
had fair success with just digging smaller beds out in the middle of the
lawn in well drained areas and letting the vines run on the ground. We
roto-till the sandy soil a week or two before we expect to plant, working in
composted cow manure and something like 6-6-6 over the whole garden area,
not just the "hills" where the seeds will be planted, to accommodate long
shallow roots. We employ soaker hoses for irrigation, (believing that
wetting the leaves contributes to problems like powdery mildew --- which, in
our area, needs no encouragement), and tend to go with frequent shallow
watering rather than deep watering in consideration of the shallow root
system.
We plant as soon as the danger of frost is past. For our area that's
considered to be after the first week of March, but we're inclined to rush
that by a week or so --- we can always replant if a late frost catches us.
We plant the seeds directly in the ground without any presoaking or clipping
or anything --- here in Florida the soil temperature should be warm enough
for germination by the time the frost danger is past. We plant three or
four seeds per "hill", with the hills separated by several feet from each
other. The "hills" aren't actually raised places --- they're just places
where we've made sort of a bed of potting soil to give the seeds a good
start and ensure they won't be burned by any of that commercial fertilizer
we worked in earlier. We water the hills after planting and usually start
seeing some gourd plants peeping through within about a week. We mulch with
dried grass clippings (that's just something we have plenty of, anything
else would probably be better), covering the entire patch, soaker hoses and
all, except for the hills where we planted the seeds.
After the seedlings are well established, say two or three inches tall, we
theoretically snip off all but one of the seedlings in a hill (we snip, we
don't pull, so as to not disturb the roots of the plant we're leaving). If
several of the seedlings are really thriving though, there's a temptation
to leave maybe a couple per hill, and we're guilty of this, but I doubt that
you actually get any more gourds this way --- and it certainly makes it
harder to spray later if the place is completely covered up with vines. We
try to begin a program of regular spraying right away, as soon as the vines
start running, and continue it until the gourds are mature --- but spraying
begins to seem futile if we get into a pattern of rain every day. Here in
Florida it can be a struggle just to keep the vines alive and healthy for
the four or five months it takes for the gourds to mature. We seem to be
troubled more in our area with fungus problems than with insects (this year
we also had to deal with rats eating almost-mature canteens --- we trapped
them) so our spraying tends to emphasize fungicides more than insecticides.
We've tried Maneb, Daconil, and copper cide, (Maneb seems to have worked the
best, but none of them are magic) and next year will try a "home remedy"
insecticide/fungicide suggested by the extension service consisting of two
tablespoons each of liquid dishwashing detergent (no degreaser), cooking
oil, and baking soda in a gallon of water and shaken frequently.
In checking our records, I see that this year we were beginning to pinch the
tips off 8-foot long main vines and do some hand pollination about six weeks
after planting, and also fertilized with 4-10-10 at this time to encourage
bloom growth. By eight weeks we were pollinating 20-40 blooms per night, by
nine weeks we had some half-grown gourds and were beginning to pull leaves
affected by powdery mildew in spite of all our spraying, and by ten weeks
there were basically no further blooms. All gourds appeared full grown by
fourteen weeks, stems were turning brown on several, and the vines were
suffering noticeably from the powdery mildew.
Our practice is to harvest the gourds and bring them into the barn as soon
as the stem leading from the vine to the gourd has turned brown. Beyond
that point the gourd seemingly can't benefit any further from remaining
attached to the vine, and once it's safely in the barn it isn't subject to
possible damage by windstorms if hanging from the arbor, or by insects if
resting on the ground, or whatever. This is Florida, you know. This year,
most of the vines were, in fact, dead or dying by the time the gourds were
harvested four to five months after planting.
I said I wasn't going to give advice, but I will at least suggest the
following general strategy that I think may be appropriate for Florida:
Plant early and harvest early. Spray like mad. Get in and get out as
quickly as you can, before something bad happens. As old Satchel Paige used
to say, "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you!"