STEEMIT SEED SAVERS – BIRDHOUSE GOURDS

Wow, this was a surprise!

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For some years now, we have been meaning to grow some of these. Finally, we managed to get some seeds planted this year, of which we wound up with one vine…

Thankfully, even though we only had one vine growing, it managed to produce seven mature birdhouse gourds. We have been patiently waiting since they formed, and finally one became completely dry.

As with many other garden plants, when you are saving gourds like this for seeds, it can be best to allow them to completely mature and dry on the vine. Once they become fully dry, they should be rather light and might even rattle.

This one was certainly light, and once I gave it a few good shakes, you could hear the seeds break loose and begin to rattle inside. Since we plan on turning some of these into birdhouses, we will be waiting for the rest of them to get ready so we can enjoy making the birdhouses together as a family, but, for now, we wanted to make sure to get some seeds saved, so here’s our process.

TIME TO SAVE THOSE SEEDS!

Our basic process was simple, and other than the mature, dry gourd, we only used a razor blade and short section of wire.

With the razor blade I began to cut a small hole in the side of the dry gourd. I lined it up where we will eventually make the hole so that this gourd can be used as a birdhouse, but the hole that I am making will be smaller. Since it is just to be able to get the seeds out of the gourd, it doesn’t have to be large enough to fit a bird into the gourd yet.

The hole that I made was smaller than an American quarter dollar.

With the short section of wire, I scraped the inside of the gourd to make sure all of the seeds and dried parts inside the gourd were loose and prepared to be removed.

With a little shaking, some seeds began to pour out…

And then some more, and some more, and some more…

By the time that they all made it out, over 300 seeds came out! A few were underdeveloped, but the vast majority were fully mature and ready for next growing season. I was really amazed at how many were in there!

All in all, there was very little inside of that gourd that was waste. Most of its contents were good seeds! Interestingly enough, this was one of the smaller birdhouse gourds on the vine too. I wonder if a few of the bigger ones might have 400 or 500 good seeds inside. I guess that time will tell and we will see, but that’s crazy to think about.

ALL FROM ONE SEED

The one seed that we planted produced seven gourds which may each have 300 or more seeds in them. That’s like getting over 2000 seeds back just from planting one. I even bet that you could sell seeds like this for about 10 cents each, which would be the equivalent of bringing in over $200 off of the seeds from just one plant, not to mention potentially selling the dried gourds as birdhouses.

Soon we will be able to see what’s inside of the other gourds. Technically, I counted 293 “good ones” in this gourd, and we still have six more to go.

Have any of you ever grown your own birdhouse gourds? If so, did you make any birdhouses out of them, and did the birds like them or use them? If not, would you like to try to grow some of these? If you would like to try, and if you are in the United States, I would be willing to send you some free seeds… just because I can. Let me know below if you are interested!

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-saving-birdhouse-gourd-seeds

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Until next time…

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GIF provided by @malos10

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