Loofah sponges

Our sweet friend sent us a great gift. She thought we'd be interested learning about the L. cylindric plant and she was SO right. The box arrived with a loofah (sometimes spelled luffa) and a gourd with some seeds. I never knew that loofahs grew as gourds. I thought that they all came from the sea. You learn something new everyday.
Apparently you can eat the plants when they are young and tender, but let them grow and dry out and they become fibrous and you have a loofah.

Now we are so excited because we're going to try and grow our own loofahs.

As our company Soap the Earth sells a lot of gift baskets, it would be great to have one of our own home grown loofahs in with our vegan products.

We'll plant in early spring in full sun, they have a long growing season, so hopefully we'll have loofahs by late autumn. I'll let you know how it goes.

The plant grows on a trellis or fence. You wait for the gourds to dry out on the vine, peel them, shake the seeds out and clean the sap of the fibers. Voila a loofah!