Gourd of Horror

Last year before planting our garden, we started seeds in our little greenhouse and nurtured them along the way, until a wind storm took out our greenhouse and the only 2 plants that survived were one tomato plant and a mystery vine type plant that we hoped to be a cucumber. It was not a cucumber, it was a bottle gourd.  I don't know if you have ever grown birdhouse gourds, but beware this plant took over it's little space at the community garden and started working on the neighbor's space as well! (Our neighboring gardener had to put up a fence to keep the gourd out.)  This was really a trial plant since we had never grown them before.

What do you mean your electric and cable are not working....

This is the only big gourd we could find so far

So this year I planted 10 plants on the hill next to our garden, and figured this would be plenty of space for them to grow and not bother anything or anyone. (Sorry community garden neighbor...) Well I have since decided that someone should write a horror story about this plant. They are EVERYWHERE, and the vines are much like strawberry vines in that they put down roots on their off shoots. They are climbing up trees, bushes, and into my watermelon. I even had to pull it off the electric pole!  I'm not sure it would have climbed all the way up to the wire, but I'm sure the neighbors would love us if the power went out because of my crazy gourds. I think we should have a bumper crop of birdhouses to paint next spring if the gourd doesn't attack us first!

It was nice knowing you tree.

Don't get to close it may climb you next.

Hope our neighbor didn't like this fence

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