Thursday, December 11, 2008

Great gourd crop this year!

After a few very disappointing years trying to grow a good crop of gourds, I finally had an exciting and very successful year. The thought of giving up was starting to weigh heavily on my mind but I had been blessed with wonderful gourds before and just had a feeling I could again.

What made this year any different?

The ingredient that I believe to be one of, if not the most important aspect to a good gourd crop is using manure to build up your soil.

Years ago when I grew my gourd crops, I had used rabbit manure around the plants and always had good gourds. Later, when I no longer had a rabbit, I started using commercial, granular fertilizer and then my crops turned to failures. Even though the plants grew fast and started producing, they soon died from some disease. Sometimes they even struggled to grow before they eventually died. I tried moving my gourd plots to other areas that hadn't grown gourds before but that didn't help.

The other factor that made this such a great year was keeping the cucumber beetles away. As soon as I noticed any of those buggers, the plants were dusted with Sevin. That was when the plants were small. Once they took off and started flowering, I quit dusting. It actually only took a few applications.

The manure I used was a mix of cow, chicken, and rabbit. Normally I would have worked it into the soil and then put in the plants. I can't take a risk on slow seed germination in cool soil so I get the plants started early.
See how I start my gourds here:
I already had the plants in the ground and then was able to get the manure, so I just side dressed with it. Worked great! I got large green leaves on fast growing vines with lots of flowers. I ended up with 115 nice sized gourds and probably would have had more but the deer were trimming some vines.

As a comparison, I grew gourds in another location. Same type of plants from the same seed source in river bottom soil that was supposedly rich. No manure in this patch but chemical fertilizer and some Sevin dust to keep the bugs under control. The plants grew but without the large green leaves and the speed that they were growing in my plot at home. Even though I had planted the same number or even a few more plants, I got only half the amount of gourds and they were much smaller.

So more manure is in the plans for my gourd patch next year. I am going to stockpile it and work the manure into my planting hills before I plant. If you want a super duper gourd crop next year, start scouting around for a local manure source.