Urban Leaves India: Our first harvest of Short Snake Gourd

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Our first harvest of Short Snake Gourd

After the patient loving preparation of Amrut Mitti, sowing seeds and taking care, our volunteers enjoyed the first harvest of a vegetable grown by themselves this Sunday, the 22nd of August.

The gourd creeper had grown and spread all over, beyond the trellis on to the solar panel    ( which is not currently in use ).
              We were overjoyed to see the many flowers, which promised us a good harvest!
Seeing a gourd on almost every node brought a sense of amazement, wonder and abundance.This gourd resembled the snake gourd but did not grow long. The ones which we kept on the plant thinking that they will grow longer , became quite overripe and fell off.

So it was time to harvest the little ones which looked ready to be plucked.
However we wondered which variety this was. Since we had procured variety of  organic seeds from different sources, there was not much info or pictures on the seed packets for us to be sure of what our produce was going to look like!  Had never seen short snake gourd variety. Amongst ourselves there were suggestions of tying a thread with a stone to the bottom of the gourd to make it longer etc..which made me surf the net for the reason of this small size. i was overjoyed to find this info on this site
This Snake Gourd variety is native to India. Fruits have light greenish white skin with green stripe shoulder, about 12 inches long and 2.5 inches in diameter. The plant is very vigorous in warm climates and produces lots of fruits for a long time. Fruits are harvested when they are young and are very popular in Indian cooking.

So the first harvest was enjoyed by all. 



  Harshala Sane and Shekar harvesting the Gourds.