Howdy folks. I woke up to an unfortunate situation this morning. I have some bottle gourds growing up a wall. They all fell over and were laying in the lawn. So I had to do some cleaning up.

Now before anyone criticizes me for harvesting the gourds this early, it was something that had to be done. The vines were a twisted mess and I couldn't get it under control without losing some of the weight. Anyway, these gourds have been growing since March. They stopped growing in size well over a month ago. They have all started to change color into the familiar dried dull brown gourd color. They have also gotten significantly lighter in weight. The stems were also beginning to turn brown. They are extremely hard. Much harder and lighter in weight than the same sized green gourds. So this tells me that it is OK to take them off the vine now.

All this coupled with the fact there are many new pods that could use the energy, I went ahead and picked them. I was able to get the vines back up on the wall minus the extra weight.

Anyway, this is what I got.