[gourds] Gourd forms

Lillian Kepp (gourds@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 13 Feb 98 16:21:27 PST 

Pat,

Part two. Or part one if this gets posted first. :)

There is a plastic form on the market called a "vegiform".  I'll 
look up my old seed source list and try to post it again.  It has 
the address of the vegiform in it.

But, anyhow, back to the books.  I read a lot and then take what I 
can use from it.  Then I carefully put the words back on the page 
that I don't use.  Sometimes I get mixed up and the next person to 
read the book has a devil of a time., But anyhow, I digress.

I have read in books about putting glass bottles around the gourd 
and then breaking the glass when the gourd is mature.  You can do 
the same thing with plastic bottles.  If you really want a gourd to 
look like a ketchup bottle, I guess you can do that.  You can also 
put plastic bottles like 7-up on the gourds.  But I don't want to 
run around the gourd patch singing "If I Had a Hammer" and have to 
break glass bottles.  Seems like it would put a lot of glass 
splinters in the gourd patch.  And if you used plastic you would 
have to cut it off.  Either way, I think you have a pretty good 
chance of damaging the gourd.

The vegiforms are two pieces of plastic that fit around the gourd 
and have a 3-D face on them. They come with connecting pieces to 
hold them together.  Some use them to put around eggplants so you 
know you have to have a gourd at least that big.  With these, you 
leave them on until the gourd fills out the form completely, then 
you remove them.  The gourd continues to grow in that shape.
Then you can take the form and put it on another gourd.  The glass 
and plastic bottles would be destroyed when you removed them from 
the gourd.  Also, you probably should do this when the gourd fills 
out the bottle and it would probably still be soft.  The gourd, not 
the bottle. :)  More chance to damage the gourd.

I also bought clear plastic "candy holders" at a craft store.  I 
suppose you can buy them at other places also.  I got mine at a 
place in Columbus, Ohio called Frank's Nursery and Cratfs.  These 
are much smaller than the vegiforms and come in two pieces that
snap together.  You are supposed to fill them with candy and use 
them at children's parties, etc.  If you have someone (maybe 
yourself) that is handy with plastic you can cut (or melt) a hole
in the top of each piece for the gourd stem.  I have shapes like
a duck, ball, rabbit, heart and I forget what else (They are packed 
away now.)  
Anyhow, they would fit around a nice egg gourd to give you an idea 
of the size.  You can do the same thing with these as you do the 
vegiforms and are a lot cheaper and would also be re-useable.  
Again, you can put them on a gourd that will be larger than an egg 
gourd, and the gourd should continue to grow in that shape.

You asked about opaque forms.  I can't give you a yes or no answer 
since I've never tried it.  But here's what I think for what it's 
worth, if anything.  I know when you plant something like chiles 
(oh, I love my chiles!  I even made a chile gourd and filled it
with dried chiles for my neighbor, but again, I digress, sorry)  
Anyhow, when you plant something like chiles, it is suggested that 
you plant them close together so the leaves will protect the fruit 
from sun scald.  Seems like the chile fruits don't need the sun, 
just the plant.  Since the leaves are where photosynthesis takes 
place that makes sense.  Gourds don't really get sun scald and a
lot of them grow under the gourd leaves and really surprise you
when you find them at the end of the season when you never knew
they were there.  So it doesn't seem like they need sunlight.
 And when you put anything, glass or plastic around the form, you 
should shade it so the hot sun doesn't cook it.  Now folks eat
some types of gourds when they are young, but who wants canned 
gourds still on the vine? :)   But, and a big but here, if you
can't see in the form, you can't see when the gourd fills out
the form, and you won't know when to remove it.  If you are
talking about something like a 7-up bottle, it is a "clear" green 
(but not opaque) and you can see in it that would be ok.

Now, another thing I have done the first year I grew gourds before
I read anything about it was tie strips of cloth around the gourd.
I did this with small egg gourds just to see what happened.  Take a 
long strip of cloth and wrap it around the gourd in a sprial, 
leaving a "row" of gourd about the size of the cloth not covered as 
you sprial .  The part of the gourd that is left showing will bulge. 

Make sure you remove the cloth before the bulge grows too big and 
covers the cloth on the rest of the gourd.  I didn't and I had a 
devil of a time getting the cloth off after the gourd matured.  The 
first one I did was an egg gourd where I just tied one piece of 
cloth around it, closer to the top than the bottom.  I still think 
the thing looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.  I didn't do a good 
job with it, since as I said, this was my first try and it was just 
an experiment.  You can really get some nice shapes this way.
I think when I was young my clothes were too tight, I never ended
up with a nice shape, just the bulges. :)

Another thing I did by accident was to make an "alien" gourd.  The 
fence I had the gourds on had about 2 inch by 3 inch openings in it. 

I got a gourd stuck in one of these holes and the metal fence kept 
it from growing in a line on each side.  The "cheeks" bulged out on 
one side of the fence and the "nose section" bulged out on the
other side of the fence, with a deep indent on each side of the 
cheeks from the fence.  Maybe take a piece of chicken wire and
wrap it around the gourd till it gets some bulges in it, then
remove it.  I've never tried it, just thought of it, but you can
bet your sweet bippie I'll try it this summer.

Pat, keep in touch, I'd like to know how you do.

Lillian Kepp
thekepps@bright.net