Job's Tears: 1st Fruits!

Job's Tears are not gourds. But I've been raising these plants for over a year. They survived my first gourden (last year- when all the gourds died) and I replanted them in my wine barrels plus another plant that I put in the pot you see here. Anyway, last year, I raised them from seed, but they did not fruit. This year, I hit them with some VF-11 and they started to produce the actual "tears".

Why am I raising Job's Tears in my gourden if they are not gourds? This grass produces a seed that some anthropologists believe were the first jewelry our ancestors would have worn. It is often called "nature's bead" because of its hard sheen, decorative patterns, shape, and self-hollowing property. You've probably seen them- they are often mistaken for puka shells. I plan to braid and bead my shekeres with the job's tears I harvest. I hope I have enough!

Here is just one of my plants.
You can see 3 seeds in the upper left.
There are about 5 or 6 other seeds on this plant alone.

Here is an internet photo of a shekere beaded with Job's Tears.
This one looks a lot like the shekere I own and play.

Luffa

Don't know how this got in my seeds, but I think some luffa seeds mus have been in the heirloom mix that Lo got me form the Zittel Farm before it closed. I'm pretty sure they are Luffa. They look like big pumpkins on the vine and before they're cured. I can't make instruments out of them, but I plan to cure them (which, for luffas, involves cutting them into strips and soaking them in bleach) and give them as Christmas gifts. A lot of fruits are blossoming. This is the size of a football right now.

Vacation

I went on vacation for 8 days to Tahoe. I figured, as you can see in my last post, that if everything died while I was gone, I'd at least have 3 to 6 fruit to work with. But our house-sitter, J, really took care of the gourden and I returned to see brand new gourds that were bigger than my prize gourds in places where there was no fruit growing before we left! I now have 10+ large gourds to work with and the plants are still healthy and growing.

This picture doesn't do justice because so many gourds are hidden. And I don't know if you can tell, but you basically have to bend over at the waist 90 degrees to walk under the gourden.

The Bright Side

It's not like my whole garden is ruined. I think I've accidentally given that impression. There's lots of good progress to report:

Here is my prize gourd. It was the very first fruit of the gourden and still the most successful. The perspective is a little off in this photo- this bilobal gourd is about 11 inches in length growing on the southernmost side of the gourden. It's what I plan to make my shekere out of. The top lobe is larger than the perspective on this photo implies. The size of the top lobe will make an excellent horn for the shekere when I cut the stem area off.This is a dipper gourd. About a foot long. I think I plan to make a maraca-style shaker out of these straight-necked dippers.

This dipper turned out fat. I'm not sure what I'll use it for it the handle doesn't become larger.

I took this photo because you can see three young dippers growing from largest to smallest in the middle of your screen. If you look closely, you can see others.

Aphid Damage

Arright. So I don't know if this damage was really caused by aphids (or the suspicious little worms I've recently spotted), but there is some damage towards the bottom of the plants. I can't figure out which of the following scenarios could have been the cause:
A> Aphid and other pests
B> My various sprays, home-made and other
C> It might just be natural
I'm hoping for scenario C. I know that part of the process here is that the whole plant will die in Autumn. If this browning is just an early signal that that's what happening, then that would be excellent. If it's my spraying that's caused it, then as a precaution I've put a hold on all spraying for the time being until the source can be found. However, if it truly is aphids/pests I'm screwed and I fear there's not much more I can do against the aphids.

Here is a wilted birdhouse gourd.

Here is the ball of a large dipper. You can see some aphids, but also the dimples and pock marks the aphids have created. Luckily, this gourd has a twin right next to it that is virtually untouched.

Shekere Slide Show

Parfum Macabre

I've had it up to here with aphids. They're everywhere! I've tried ladybugs and I've tried sprays ("natural" herbal ones) and nothing has worked besides hosing off the whole gourden. Hosing it off daily is not only laborious, but it over-waters the gourden.

So I decided to make my own spray. In our herb garden, there are some herbs that have become overgrown: tarragon, oregano, bolting cilantro, flowering thyme, and rosemary. I cut off enough to fill a blender and blended the herbs and simmered them in water, strained it through a mesh strainer to extract compostable matter, then strained it again through cloth so as not to clog the spray gun with small particles (this step is totally necessary). Then I put in some simple dish and hand soap (the "natural" kind, whatever that means), poured it into a spray bottle and shook it up.
I wound up with a dark green noxious elixir. To be somewhat scientific, I sprayed it on about half of the gourden to see what happens. This was last night, so when I checked this morning, there were fewer aphids, but this could be due to time of day or whatever, so I decided to wait 24 hours to draw any conclusions.

Ladybugs (originally posted 7/28/08)

I have an aphid problem. Some were even killing young gourds and turning them to mush. Among other things (high pressure spray, soapy water), I tried ladybugs. I bought a few hundred of them in a little can and released them at night (so they don't fly away). Here's some pictures of them enjoying my gourden:

Gourden Expansion: Canopy Installation (originally posted 7/1/08)

My Gourden started out kinda like this:

Today it looked like this:

It is becoming overgrown. So I used 50 feet of wire, 8 eye bolts, 2 "S" hooks, and two 5/32" aluminum ferrules to make a canopy than extends from the fence above the gourden's trellis backing to make a simple sawtooth-patterned canopy with 7 six-foot lengths of wire connecting to the exterior wall of my garage.

And now it looks like this:

After I installed the canopy, which only to about 30 minutes or so, I spent some time training the vines, which is very satisfying work. And here is my biggest gourd, an apple-sized birdhouse gourd, I think:

Progress in the Gourden (originally posted 6/5/08)

This is what my Gourden looks like right now.

This is the before picture,
only 2 months ago.

New Gourden for 08 ! (originally posted 3/6/08)

This is my new Gourden. My old gourden was scattered across different parts of the yard. I planted too late and the fruit and plants whithered. My new gourden has been centralized and planted on time. These wine barrels were a free roadside score and I rolled them home by myself and cut them in half with a skillsaw. The clay chimney links were actually part of my house's vent system when we moved in. I've arready seeded (including some special seeds Lo-Rizzle and Sissy got me from a gourd farm). The little green dying things are Job's Tears that I salvaged from the front yard. They never yielded their naturally occurring, self-hollowing bead that I plan to use on the netting of the Shekeres I plan to make. Hopefully this year goes better.

Originally posted 11/23/07 (first gourden attempt)

Nothing much to report here, other than all my gourds are dead. The cold weather and bugs got 'em. I think I planted too late in the season.

I think I'm going to build a small gourden in my side yard- out of three wine barrel halves I have lying around. Probably plant them in May.

In the meantime, I might experiment with purchased gourds- making instruments out of them.

More to come.

Originally posted 9/02/07 (first gourden attempt)

Here are a couple of my gourd plants. I think both are bilobal bottle gourds. One is just sprouting (L). The two in the other picture are climbing up Jill's sunflowers (R).










Below is a picture of a newly sprouting "Job's Tears" plant, which is an ornamental grass that yields gourd-like seeds often used to make rosaries. They are commonly refered to as nature's beads because they cure themselves and hollow themselves out (with a hole at either end). I'm raising the Job's Tears to bead my Shekeres with.

Originally Posted 7/23/07 (first gourden attempt)

A gourden is what weird gourd crafter people call a garden full of gourds. Yes, I've become one of those weirdos.

It all started with a rattle, called a shekere, that I salvaged and repaired. I love this rattle and use it for lots of different types of music. I decided, since my house is officially "done", that I needed a thing. And I got really into the idea of making percussion instruments from gourds.I've since done a lot of gourd research. I also went a little overboard and planted about 20+ gourd seeds around our property. Some in our vegatable garden, some in Jill's cutting garden, and some in different flower beds in the front. Some are bilobal bottle gourds, some are short-neck dippers, some are birdhouse gourds, and some are corsican flats. I'm not going to make a birdhouse with the birdhouse gourds, but I'm hoping to use them to make the body of a stringed instrument. I plan to make shekeres from the bottle gourds. And djabarras and shakers with the dippers.

I plan to blog about my progress as time goes on, but for now, they're aren't even flowers on the plants.