Oh My Gourd: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing

I’ve Got My Gourd Seeds, Now What?

If you’re new to gourd-growing, congratulations! You are joining a long and winding  line of humans who have enjoyed planting, tending, drying, crafting and generally admiring gourds.  People have been growing gourds for about 12,00 years… pretty much since farming began.

What’s a Gourd?!

A gourd is a member of the squash family, the Cucurbits. They’re a cousin to pumpkins, yes… and also cucumbers, watermelons, zucchinis, delicata squash, etc. Here at Gourdlandia, we’re all about the Bottle gourd, aka Hard-Shell gourd; Lagenaria siceraria. They’re occasionally called “the white-flowered gourd,” because in addition to being the only member of the squash family that develops a wood-like shell when dried, bottle gourds are also the only member of that family that has a white flower. And what’s more, those white flowers bloom at night!

Oh, you’re in for some fun.

We try to refrain from being gourd snobs, but you should know… those other gourds, the ornamentals? The little yellow and green guys seen around the holiday? They are a distant cousin. They have yellow flowers. They may dry, but their shell will be quite thin. I like to turn the ornamentals into, well, ornaments! (See? I’m not totally a gourd snob!).

There are lots and lots of varieties of bottle gourds, as this illustration shows.

If you have free seeds from Gourdlandia in 2025, they are Umbilical Gourd seeds. They’re not shown here; they’re a variety we’ve been developing at Gourdlandia for the last several years.

Want other varieties? You can buy seeds of many gourd types inexpensively through small businesses that specialize in gourds. Here are two: Benjamin’s Landing, and Quarry Farm Gourds. 

In other articles on this site, you can read about how to germinate seeds and get your plants off to a great start. There’s info on how to coax a seed to stick its little white tongue out in the spring, and how to wash the moldy skin off a gourd that grew from that seed, a year later. And everything in between! We’ll explain how we grow and craft gourds at Gourdlandia, and how others do things, often very differently. One thing you’ll surely discover is that there’s no one correct way. The world of gourd growers is full of experimenters… so dive right in! Watch what happens. Learn, and then share what you’ve learned. 

In the words of Vivalina’s Auntie Vi: 

“I know you, you will learn what you need… Come to the cupboard and pick out a seed!”