When it comes to deciding what to plant each year, I like to pick at least one thing to grow for fun.
For the past few years, one of those things has been luffa.
While these are supposed to be edible in their young stages, what I’m after is the fully mature sponge stage – and the seeds that come with it! Which needs an insanely long growing season we don’t have, so they have to be started indoors quite early. Then they have to survive transplanting, and have a the hotter temperatures they prefer, and… and… and…
Not an easy thing to grow in our climate and short growing season, but the challenge is the fun of trying!
So far, we’ve had only one year where we almost had a sponge, but it was too underdeveloped when it got hit by our first frost.
This year, I’m planning something different. They will be grown in pots, in our portable greenhouse.
I set 4 older seeds to pre-germinate, got three seedlings, one of which died off. A second one just sort of stopped growing, and a third seemed to do all right. Especially once in the portable greenhouse.
Then we got that day of high winds that actually blew the greenhouse askew and knocked all bins of transplants to the ground.
Amazingly, not only did the big one survive, but the little one I though was going to die ended up finally sprouting true leaves!
With our overnight temperatures and the protection of the greenhouse, I decided it was safe to pot them up and set them to where they will spend the summer.
I had three pots with soil that needed refreshing, so the first thing I did was empty them into the wheelbarrow.
Next I added some cow manure and a decent amount of a rehydrated brick of coconut fibre, which you can see at the top of the pile in the wheelbarrow.
One of the trays of chitted potatoes had spilled much of its stove pellets that I was using to absorb moisture from the cut edges of the potatoes. A lot of those pellets ended up on one of the pots below, and I just left them, so that would add some sawdust to the mix as well.
The largest pot did not have any drainage holes, and I ended up making a nail hole a couple of inches from the top, so rainwater could drain out rather than drowning the lemongrass that was growing in it at the time. The bottom of that pot had a layer of grass clippings added, before the soil. When I dumped that pot out, I found the grass layer on the bottom was still there, and absolutely matted with roots. The roots were dead, of course. I pulled those out while I was mixing the soil amendments together as best I could, then watered the whole thing down.
I left that for the dry stuff, like the stove pellets and manure, to absorb the water, then scrubbed out all three pots.
I have only two luffa seedlings, so I decided to just refill the two matching pots. They have large drainage holes, and there are no trays for them, so I took the root/grass clipping mats I’d set aside and used those to line the bottom of the pots, so keep the soil from getting washed out the bottom.
I also prepared the spaced for them in the greenhouse. I expect these to climb the frame. I took the wire shelves off of the space directly above them, so they can be more easily accessed, and the vines can follow the frame without going through the wire shelves. As they get bigger, I can train the vines to grow where I want them to.
After refilling the clean pots, I set them in their spots, then did the transplanting. I made sure to well water the holes in the soil I made for the luffa, first. I find pre-watering the planting holes makes a big positive difference.
The fiber pot for the larger one had been damaged when the wind knocked things over, so it had been set into a Red Solo cup, to keep it from falling apart. That seemed to work quite well, and there were plenty of roots visible. I did remove the fiber pot, though. These are supposed to be the kind where you can bury them in the ground whole, so as not to disturb the roots, but I find they don’t actually break down very well. While the luffa roots grew through where the pot had cracked when it fell, there were no roots at all growing into the pot walls, even though I made sure to keep it well hydrated. The root ball held together, though, and was easy to just tuck into the pot. The smaller luffa didn’t have much of a root ball at all, but that’s to be expected.
The tray of failed chitted potatoes that did not fall over still had plenty of stove pellets. I’d been hanging on to those! The very hot and desiccated potatoes finally went to compost, and I scattered the stove pellets around the luffa, to act as a mulch. Then it all got a gentle watering. The stove pellets immediately start swelling up and breaking into sawdust, and do a great job of covering the soil surface.
With the wire shelves above the pots removed, that meant adjusting the bins of transplants a bit. Most are too tall – either the bins or the transplants – to go on the top shelves, without touching the plastic cover. Contact with the plastic could potentially burn them.
So that is finally done! The luffa will now spend the summer in their pots in the portable greenhouse. Hopefully, this means we’ll finally have some actual luff sponges to harvest in the fall!
I’m closely monitoring the forecast over the next while. In the 10 day forecast, we’ve got a few colder nights, and then it seems to warm up enough to potentially start transplanting things outside.
Then I see the long range forecast.
*sigh*
Apparently, around June 5 and 6, we’re supposed to get rain. Rain which is supposed to continue through the 7th, which is supposed to have an overnight low just above freezing – then on the 8th, the rain is supposed to turn to snow, and the overnight low is expected to be below freezing. Even once that has passed, it’ll be several more nights before things are warm enough for transplants.
Which means that for the things that need to be transplanted out sooner, we would have to find a way to cover them with frost protection.
It’s so warm and pleasant right now, it’s really hard to resist getting things planted! It is, however, still just past the middle of May. We’ve got nearly 2 more weeks before it can be considered safe to transplant things!
I admit I’m chomping at the bit! I guess it’s really a good thing I’ve had to do so much running around. While it keeps me from getting much done outside, it’s also keeping me from putting things out too early, too!
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 