Farm Life

About Farm Life

Five Rivers MetroParks staff members share helpful advice for creating a sustainable food supply as well as stories from local farmers and news from the front lines of the local food movement.

February 2012

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29

RSS Syndication

XML Farm Life
XML More 'DDN' feeds

More recent entries

• Grow a Luffa Sponge!
• Sausage Making for the Home Gourmet
• The Nutrition of Your Crop
• What's Liquid, Amber in Color, and Sweet...Maple Syrup!
• New Years Resolution:Learn How to Garden
• Which Composting Method is Best? What is Bokashi?
• My Garlic Sprouted Too Soon!
• Food Movement Meeting Success!
• Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
• Gifts for Gardeners
• More entries...

Archives

• February 4, 2012
• February 2, 2012
• January 28, 2012
• January 25, 2012
• January 21, 2012
• January 14, 2012
• January 6, 2012
• More archives...

Home > Blogs > Farm Life and Local Harvest > Archives > 2012 > February > 04 > Entry

Grow a Luffa Sponge!

By Kasey Henneman | Saturday, February 4, 2012, 09:40 AM

That’s right, I said grow a sponge.

Luffa (also spelled loofah) is a plant. Consumer identity has mistakenly grouped this plant-sponge with the animal sponge look alike, the sea-sponge but they are not the same! Luffa = plant; sea sponge = animal. If you are like me, this information is kind of shocking. Okay, once that settles in, read on…

Not only is this sponge a plant, but it’s easy to grow, and produces a lot of fruit- or in this case, sponges.

Pinch me I must be dreaming. Nope- this is real! The luffa is a vine-ing gourd similar to a cucumber, or pumpkin vine. Fedco Seed Co-op out of Maine (link here to their website) had some interesting history on this amazing plant,” (luffa) also known as Dishrag Gourd, is dried and used for making bath sponges. Some folks pick them young, steam and pan-fry them. In addition to being a scrubber and a comestible, this versatile gourd has been used to make soundproof wall boarding, to insulate army helmets, to stuff mattresses and saddles and even to make filters for steam engines and diesel motors.”

Cool! P.s., this also makes a great gift; leave the shell on and let the gift receiver ‘un-wrap’ it by removing the shell themselves. Now you have given an ecofriendly sponge, not wasted any gift wrapping, AND they get some seeds (are there awards for this level of ‘green-ness’?)-!

Some things to know before growing your luffa sponges. Select a sight where the luffa can grow like crazy. These plants are prolific, and really want to vine out so don’t put it in the garden, it won’t play nice with the other plants. Plant the luffa somewhere it can trellis itself, like a fence or around the compost bin or just plant it in it’s own separate area and plan on building a trellis if you want straight luffa. Like Fedco Seed Co mentioned, luffa can also be picked early and eaten. Luffa picked at this this stage is sometimes called ‘Chinese Okra’ and is very popular in most Asian countries (link here to a recipe for edible luffa). To harvest edible luffa, simply pick the gourd when it is about the size of a small cucumber.

To use your luffa for sponges allow the gourds to grow and then dry on the vine. Once it’s dry and brittle, squeeze the gourd to release it from it’s shell and shake the seeds out. The shell should be brittle enough to peel easily and the seeds should be black (save some seeds for next year). Link here to the Wandering Chopsticks blog for some great luffa sponge sequence photos.

Have fun!

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |

Tweet