****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I grew 2 vines. Hard soil, dry weather and I ended up with 20 big luffa gourds, yielding beautiful loofah sponges. For the newbies like me, this is a time intense project. Peeling them, drying them out and getting the seeds out all take a while. In my case, frost was a threat to the still green gourds. We removed them from the vines and put them into the oven at 200 degrees fahrenheit for about half an hour. Some were too long to fit so we cut them in half cross wise. We then removed them from the oven and cut a slit down the skin. Laying them slit side down helped steam the skin loose. We cut off the ends and peeled them by hand, sliding our fingers under the skin and pulling. "Like a banana" most websites say. Except bananas are much easier! The juice is like thinned aloe gel and makes this a slippery job. And the skin is thicker than a banana peel. It IS a squash member after all. Once the skins were removed, we tried to squeeze out seeds and juice until eventually, we needed a break. We checked the weather and since the temperature overnight was going to be similar to a refrigerator, we just left them on a table. The next morning, I put them into a sink full of warm water with a little bleach. I lined the oven racks with foil and put a tray on the bottom with a little water in it. Then we again kept squeezing the juice, seeds and water out as much as possible, rinsing the bleach out as we went. Then we put them into the oven at 350 for varying times. It will just depend on the size of the loofah. Some were dehydrated in half an hour. Some took much longer. That process took us 2 days because we kept having to pause to go to work. After that was done, tapping and shaking them loosened the seeds. In addition to this, young small luffah fruit can be eaten, and the flowers can be used like any other squash blossoms. The juice is sometimes used to make lotion and I can tell you that it is softening and has a temporary tightening effect. We really enjoyed this experience but it might be a while before we need to plant them again.
