Growing Bottle Gourd In My Garden

We went to buy fertilizer and at the same time to pick up some vegetable seeds. I saw and was interested in the packet of Bottle Gourd seeds. I am interested in trying to grow vegetables that I haven't tried before so I bought a packet of the Bottle Gourd seeds.

#1

Bottle gourd seedlings grown in a big pot.

#2

The bottle gourd vines about 25 days later from photo #1 above.

#3

Sign of flower buds at about a month after planting seedlings. Most of the early buds fell off and do not form gourds.

#4

Gourds started to appear when the vines were about 2 months old.

#5

The first 4 bottle gourds in my garden.

#6

The feeling of joy watching the gourds grow day by day.

#7

Finally, I harvested the first 2 bottle gourds from my garden after about 2 months plus from the planting of the seedlings. The longer gourd is about 15 inches long.

#7

This is my first time cooking bottle gourd. I used half of the bottle gourd to boil soup. I added some meat and fish balls to the soup.

#8

Next day, I used the one and half of the remaining gourds to boil soup with carrot, red dates, goji berries and pork ribs, just like how I boil the yellow cucumber soup. The soup was enough for 4 people, so I gave half to my neighbour.

#9

Few days later, I harvested the 3rd and 4th gourds from the vine. I gave away the above 2 gourds to 2 of my friends for them to boil soup. There are now a few small gourds on the vines and I am waiting for them to grow big and mature before harvesting them.

A portrait of Marilyn Monroe, an American actress.

I found this portrait at the lobby of a hotel in Penang.

(Born 1926, Died 1962)

Linking to Tuesday's Treasures, Image-in-ing & Happy Tuesday.

For everything there is a season,

a time for every activity under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, New Living Translation-NLT)