My Blog

Loofah Sponges, Post Harvest

2020-12-20T00:00:00-05:00

It's late December, and I'm still sorting through my loofah treasure. An ideal loofah is sort of like all-natural aerogel. One of the cool things about growing them has been seeing what a not-ideal loofah looks like.

Many of the ones that I harvested green rotted, and ended up in the compost. Others took a long time to lose their outer husk, and those tended to have a lot of flesh remaining in the middle. In a few others the husk stuck to sponge and I half-destroyed the sponge getting the skin off. I left some un-husked squash in a spare room for a few days, and they molded badly. Lessons learned. I can still smell them faintly in that spare room, unfortunately. (Note: if you are a guest in my house and you sleep on the sofabed and you think it smells faintly of overripe squash, it's just your imagination.)

Overall I ended up with about 10 premium loofahs that peeled without much trouble and looked good as soon as they dried. I could chop the big ones in two, which would give me about 15 decent-sized loofahs out of that batch.

Then there's another 10 or so that don't look very nice but will probably clean up well with a bleach soak. Last but not least, there's the funky bunch -- the ones where the skin stuck to the sponge, or there's still flesh inside, or the sponge is compromised in some other way. I don't know how hard I'm going to work to use these, but they'll be good for scrubbing plates if nothing else. (I used one today to clean out my cast iron pan.)

Left to right are the funky ones, the to-be-bleached, and the clean crew

And the seeds! So many seeds. I have well over a quart. I'll give them away to my neighbors and let them have the fun next year.

Loofah Sponges, Stars of My 2020 Garden

2020-10-24T00:00:00-04:00

At some point in your life, you've probably encountered a loofah sponge. They work pretty well for scrubbing, I think. A year or so ago, I learned that they're a type of squash, so I tried them in my garden this year.

They've been vigorous and showy, with scads of yellow flowers that the native bees love, and gigantic fruits that drew lots of questions from neighbors. It's late October, and despite a near-frost last weekend, these plants are still putting out new fruit.

The seed packet says "Compact Loofah Sponge Gourd". I'd like to know which part of these are supposed to be compact. The squash I harvested was two feet long (60cm) as you can see in the photo below. It's not the largest I have. The plants themselves ran everywhere -- into and over the tomatoes, over the 12' tall sunflowers, and into the cowpeas. (The cowpeas have also been really aggressive and I'm content to let them fight it out with the squash for supremacy. Go ahead, fight. Feel like you're winning. Frost is coming.)

According to the seed packet and advice I've seen on the Internet, I'm supposed to harvest these when they're brown on the outside. Ideally I should be able to hear the seeds rattling around inside. Mine haven't dried particularly well on the vine. Of the five I've harvested so far, all had a significant amount (maybe as much as a cup/250ml) of fetid liquid inside. The skins were rotting rather than drying, and poking/scratching a hole in the skin allowed the liquid to escape. (Watch out for your shoes!) This might have to do with the amount of rain we've received, including from Hurricane Delta.

I tore a hole in the delicate skin while harvesting. This closeup shows the loofah sponge underneath.

Peeling them has been a mixed bag, with some of the skin coming off in big, easy sheets, and other sections requiring scraping with a fingernail. Once peeled and dried them in the sun, the seeds start to come loose. Squash usually have lots of seeds inside, and these are no exception, so if you grow these once, you can have them forever.

And yes, you can eat them, but only when they're small. I tried one and it was just OK. There's enough other good things to eat; I'd rather let it grow into a sponge.

My only disappointment with these squash is that they're a completely different genus from Long Island Cheese Squash, so I can't cross them and get rich selling pumpkin spice loofah sponges.

Note: I wrote a followup post about my loofah harvest.

Snail eggs?

2020-10-05T00:00:00-04:00

Snail eggs, I think

Wood Blewits (Clitocybe nuda, Lepista nuda)

2020-10-03T00:00:00-04:00

I got an order of Wine Cap spawn from Mushroom Mountain the other day, and in the package was a pamphlet on growing Wood Blewits (Clitocybe nuda, also Lepista nuda). Out of curiosity, I read more on their identification and habitat, and today I was glad I did. I went on a walk with a fellow mycophile today and we found what I believe are Wood Blewits growing in three different locations.

I took one home with me so I could take a spore print. Here's the photos I took of the shroom.

The gills are are a pretty shade of lavender.

The cap was a faded lavender color; not distinctive. Note that the stem is wider at the base.

The stem is fibrous and not hollow.

The spore print is white. I took the print on a gray piece of cardboard. It maybe wasn't the best choice of color, but I was hoping for/expecting a white spore print, and I didn't have any dark paper.

For identification, I consulted my copy of A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms (Weber and Smith), my Peterson field guide to mushrooms, plus a number of identification guides online.

Based on the spore print, time of year (cool weather), habitat, and mushroom features (color, wider at base of stem, etc.), I feel pretty confident that this is Clitocybe nuda.

I want to get a second opinion before I eat it, though. There's good reason to be extra cautious with this mushroom, because Wood Blewits have poisonous lookalikes in the Cortinarius genus. I read in a number of places that they're not a mushroom for beginning foragers.

Also, Wood Blewits contain compounds that can make you sick, but they're destroyed by cooking, so just make sure they're well cooked. And last but not least, with any new mushroom it's a good idea to eat just a little the first time around to make sure it agrees with your digestive system.

If I get a positive ID I'll go back and harvest some of the others I found, because I'd like to try this mushroom which is said to be excellent. I might even consider growing it in my yard.

Frist Psot!

2020-09-11T00:00:00-04:00

Beatrice napping