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Gourd growers turning hollow plants into cash from artisans

By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

GREENVILLE, Ohio — Most farmers don’t bother growing gourds – to most they’re not even considered a cash crop. But ask any grower of the fruit and they’ll tell you there’s money to be made growing gourds.

“They grow very easily,” Gloria Henning said from her booth at last month’s Ohio Gourd Show at the Darke County Fairgrounds in Greenville. “You simply sprinkle seeds on a mound, roto-till between the rows and watch them grow.”

Henning and her husband, Michael, grow just 1.5 acres of the fruit yet produce 3,000 gourds on their lot in Arian, Mich. They make crafts from about half and sell the other half to craftsmen.
“It can be a profitable business, whether you’re a grower, artist, designer or painter,” Henning said. “Some people go to the trouble of using trellises to shape the plant. We did that one season, but not any more. Too much work.”

According to Henning, too much rain is one drawback to growing gourds. Pests include insects, deer and squirrels, though the latter give growers the most fits.

“Deer will paw at the hard gourds while squirrels chew on them when they’re green,” she said.

Most artisans harvest gourds after the first frost and allow them to dry over winter. The coarse shells are sanded smooth, then washed with soap and water. Some are drilled to make birdhouses, bird feeders or even musical instruments. Some are left untouched. The fibrous interior can be used as a sponge, but is often discarded by artists.

Handcrafted, the gourds are often painted with oils or acrylic. Once dry, the gourds are given a coat of leather dye or polyurethane to preserve the paint color.

“We start out growing them in greenhouses and transplant them the second week of June,” Henning said.

Tim Beckman of Wayne County, Ohio, said the additional income he makes from growing gourds “is unbelievable and highly profitable.

“I don’t have an artistic bone in my body, so I only grow the gourds for people who do. I attend five gourd shows each fall and when all is said and done, artists buy every one that I have. The profit from growing these babies is huge.”

Gourds are classified as a warm-season crop with a growing season from 100-180 days, which is why Beckman and others start growing them indoors early. Seeds should be planted singly two feet apart in each row, with rows five feet apart, or in hills four to five feet apart with rows seven feet apart.

“Gourds are vigorous growers and will readily adapt to a trellis, fence or arbor for support,” Beckman said. “The fruit will form areas of discoloration if allowed to come in contact with the ground, and many craftsmen look down on that.”

Weeds may be controlled with mulches or by hand cultivation. Mulches have the advantage of conserving soil moisture and keeping fruit clean.

Hand cultivation should be done with care since gourds have shallow roots and injury can result with deep cultivation.
Gourds, like other fruits, have pests such as the squash bug, squash vine borer, cucumber beetle and aphids. And then there are things like bacterial wild, powdery mildew and mosaic viruses. But survive all this, and the gourds will be ready for harvest when the stems dry and turn brown.

“A grower can command $3 for baseball-sized gourds and up to $30 or higher for ones the size of a small lamp,” Beckman said. “There’s money in gourds even before an artist turns them into a thing of beauty.”

A gourd is a plant of the family Cucurbitaceae, a name given to a hollow, dried shell of a fruit in the Cucurbitaceae family of plants. It is in the same family as the pumpkin. Gourds have been cultivated for thousands of years by many cultures worldwide, including Native Americans, for their usefulness as utensils and storage containers and as ornaments.

10/28/2009