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Since the gourds float I lay a wet cloth over the exposed side so that the whole gourd is getting soaked. If there are a few stubborn spots let it soak for 10 more minutes and scrub again. You can use steel wool cautiously being for very stubborn spots. The black spots can be very tough to remove but most others easily come off. Many of my finished birdhouses incorporate the natural patterns in the art yet for others I want the plain yellow gourd as my canvas. Depending on your final goals the prep work varies.
Apple with Hat Gourd Art Birdhouse
It will continue to feed the gourd to optimal maturity, and is also handy for suspending it to dry out. Now that we’ve discussed cultivation and troubleshooting pests and disease, it’s time to reap the rewards of our labors. And be sure that when you grow squash of any kind, you remember to rotate locations yearly to avoid pests and diseases that can winter over in the soil. For more information, see our complete guide to growing squash.
Drilling Holes for the Strap, Entrance, and Drainage
Anyway, you can learn a lot of things in a few minutes tooling around the club's website. These gourds are shaped into vases, perfect for holding dried flowers. You can buy a variety of gourds from Martha's Gourds.
Sunflower Gourd Birdhouse , Garden Art , Honey Bees , Bees and Birdhouses , Perfect Mother's Day Gift
For this idea to work, you need a hard shell gourd, white paint, a sock, ribbon, acrylic paint, glue, scissors, and a fine-tip paintbrush. Spray your snowman gourd birdhouse with lacquer, paint, or clear sealer to protect the color and the gourd from the elements. It’s spacious, and birds fly from miles to roost and raise chicks in it. Besides, its simplicity and the colors on a red-dyed gourd will blow your mind.
How to Recycle Pumpkins for Birds and Wildlife - Birds & Blooms
How to Recycle Pumpkins for Birds and Wildlife.
Posted: Wed, 23 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Its vines may reach lengths of 16 feet or more, and can grow on the ground, along fences, over arbors and pergolas, or up teepees and trellises.
How to Grow Birdhouse Gourds!
Now your kids can join the fun too and express themselves. The artwork that transformed a simple apple gourd into a great birdhouse will inspire them. It’s quite an adorable home for birds, which can be ornamental or functional.
Midsummer Favorites From a Plant Breeder's Garden
I made our doors just a little shy of the middle closer to the bottom so rain wouldn’t pour in the holes. The kids really enjoyed that part of our project. We shook them into a bucket so we could try to grow them again. We have found birdhouse gourds to be very easy to care for. Ours have never experienced any serious pest or disease.
Or, you may find yourself with a gourd that has hard clumps of seeds and thick, peeling inner walls. Either way, use the chopstick to scrape and break up as much of the material in the gourd as you can, shaking out seeds and bits as you go. Other options for cleaning tools are a long metal spoon, screwdriver or a wire coat hanger. A long-handled tweezers or needle-nosed pliers can be very handy to pull out large pieces of peelings and clumps of seeds. Remember, what's left inside will be taken care of by the first residents of your birdhouse.
Gourd Birdhouse, Wren House, For Your Garden, Birdlover gift
The flowers lure beneficial insects to your yard, helping to give you a great food harvest. You then get your crafty hat on and create a masterpiece of a home for the birds and hang them up. The next growing season, you have birds using the condos and acting as vegetable sentries as they eat thousands of bug pests in your garden.

Around here, we usually have a guaranteed 5 months without frost which seems the perfect amount of time for the gourds to grow. Birdhouse gourds are in the Cucurbitaceae family along with pumpkins and squash. Here are two reputable sources of birdhouse gourd seeds, L.
Early weeding is necessary but as they grow the garden becomes a thick carpet of green and the weeds are quite easily managed. The vines trail off about 10 or more feet from where they are planted. We have only had to water the gourds a few times a year when it gets very dry in mid-summer. Birdhouse gourds make an ideal gardening project for the whole family. The hard-shelled hanging fruits are not edible but are wonderful for craft projects such as creating decorative homes for the birds.
You can attempt to increase female flower production by adding phosphorus-enriched fertilizer, or if bees are not reaching your flowers, hand pollinate the flowers. Because of its long growing season and warm temperature requirements, luffa is best seeded directly in your garden. Starting the seeds indoors requires four to six weeks in a greenhouse-like setting at about 65 to 70 degrees F with full sunlight. All of my birdhouse holes are a standard 1.5” round.
They will eventually need to be transplanted outdoors and require a trellis or other support for growing their large, pendulous fruits. Luffa plants are cold-sensitive, so harden them appropriately and only bring them outdoors when the temperatures are consistently above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Gourd birdhouses will last up to 10 years without any special care, but often times the finish on the gourd will wear off. To prolong the life of your birdhouse, it should only be hung outside during nesting season.
After years of growing gourds, the only pest that we noticed were cucumber beetles but they never did enough damage to worry about. I had mildew on my vines, as I seem to get on any plant from the Cucurbitaceae family in my urban yard, but it did not affect my gourds. I still got to harvest large healthy gourds even though the vine looked very sad by the end of the season. Of course, there are methods (even organic ones) to deal with mildew but for me, I found it unnecessary. Use a hole saw to drill the entry hole in the gourd. When drilling, it helps to brace the gourd against something so it doesn’t roll.