Growing Gourds

Garden Tillers

IMPORTANT: Reasons for using tillers in your garden instead of just turning with a shovel is because a tiller actively stirs the soil from the ground up.  Cucubmber Beetles are the enemy #1 of gourd growers.  Cucumber Beetles breed by laying their eggs under the surface of the ground.  By tilling early preferably while it is still cold, the eggs get thrown into the air with the dirt, but they are lighter, more like dust.  the dirt falls rapidly back to the surface, the eggs are brought to the top, and most will be killed off by the cold nights and the exposure.

Good garden tillers are a killer tools for you and killers to the Cucumber Beetles too.  If you do not till your garden before planting gourds, and you plant them where you grew them the year before, it is likely they will hatch as soon as your srouts start getting their first set of gourd leaves, and they will eat the top of the sapling right off, and this will kill the vine before it even gets a chance to vine.  If you use Sevin or another insecticide on a sapling this small, you will burn it, and the stem will not get thick enough to feed a full vine.

If at all possible, it is wise to till your garden in the fall after the vines have died off, this will kill many cucumber beetles and other vine killing pests through the winter, but at least run a garden tiller over the garden before you plant in the early spring.

Next: What Gourds to grow in your Area