Hi all. This is my first post in a long time. I planted Gourds for the first time ever ths year. The are doing great, the bottle gourds I know how to leave on the vine till after first frost, but the small little ones i have no idea. They are growing all over our boysenberry vines and have the cutest little gourds, round, striped, long neck, bumpy ones. So what do I do when they are ripe ? I live in AZ and Frost wont come till Dec.
I just picked many small gourds off the vines. You need to make sure they are very, VERY hard before picking them otherwise they will rot. Store them somewhere cool and they will last a very long time.
The year I grew gourds our first frost wasn't until almost mid-December. I left them hanging until the vines were completely brown and I was afraid they would fall off on their own. I had some mesh bags, like you get some produce in from the grocery store, put one in each of those and hung them from the rafters in the backroom. What little winter weather we had must have been okay, because by the next fall they were completely dry and you could rattle the seeds. Our weather is dry enough that there was no mold on them to have to scrub off either. What are you going to do with them after they have cured?
