Growing Luffa

Sam has set up a garden for me in almost all of the 15 or so houses we have lived in.  It is where I like to go to quietly work and think and pray.  It is where I can catch my breath and breathe deep.  Unfortunately, as of late it has been hard to have enough time to do even basic garden chores.  The saga of this garden is long and interesting only to me, so I'll spare you the details.  We moved into this house September of 2012 and I finally have a bit of green in the garden.  If we can only survive the dry season, we will be golden.  I wanted to share one of my successes from the garden and a new plant for me, Luffa.  It survived much neglect and powdery mildew when almost all other types of squashes and even the cucumbers perished.  

You can eat them in stir fry when they are green and young.  We haven't tried that yet.  We allowed ours to dry and turn brown.  Then we gave them a good shake to harvest all the seeds.  That was super fun and made a neat sound.  Once most of the seeds were out we soaked the dried luffa in water for about 45 minutes.  Below you can see Haden easily peeling off the out layer.  Once that is gone we laid them in the sun to dry.  

They work great for scrubbing both your body and your dishes.  I can't wait to include them in little gift baskets with some homemade soap.  We are loving the low maintenance, useful luffa plant.